Superluminal (16 page)

Again, he woke from the nightmare; again, everything went
wrong. He came to awareness retching and screaming, clawing at the top of his
sleep chamber without even the wit to reach for the latch. Laenea cried out in
his mind, and he knew that she was dying.

As so many he had dreamed about had died.

Radu saw Vasili’s pale face through the thick glass
above him.

“Stay asleep! Don’t wake up!” The
pilot’s terrified voice penetrated the heavy lid. “Damn you, stay
asleep!”

The latch popped open, but Radu could not lift the lid and
Vasili’s weight too. He fought to escape and he knew he could not
succeed. He was going to faint, but the unconsciousness would not be deep
enough to shield him from transit. This time, he would die.

With his last bit of strength he lurched against the chamber
lid and flung it open. Struck by its edge, Vasili reeled back and fell,
thudding hard against a bulkhead.

On his hands and knees beside his box, Radu coughed and
panted. Bile stung sour and hot in his throat and tears of rage and frustration
and relief streamed down his face. He was shaking violently.

When he finally got control of himself, he forced himself to
stand. Vasili stood pressed against the wall, his hands spread on the smooth
metal surface. Saying nothing, Radu went to wash his face and rinse the foul
taste from his mouth.

When he glanced up, dripping, into the mirror, he was
surprised that he looked very much the same as always. His hair was more
rumpled than usual. Random damp locks, darkened by the water, clung to his
forehead. His shirt was filthy, and it stank. He took it off and flung it toward
the cleaner. It fell into the bin, but nothing happened. Most of the ship was
still in transit mode, so even the semi-intelligent machines were down. The air
felt chilly on his bare chest and arms. He stripped and put on clean clothes
from his locker. The familiar tasks eased his agitation; even the nausea slowly
went away.

What’s happening to me? he thought.

In the control room, Vasili gazed into the course
computer’s display. He looked up, his expression troubled.

“The ship can’t go through that again.”

“No more can I,” Radu said.

They stared at each other, neither knowing what to say.

“Well. Maybe once more,” Vasili said.

“Once more! With what? That was the last transit
drug!”

“I know it’s impossible to take two at once
— but could you raise the dose of one of them?”

“My dose is already calculated at the threshold of
toxicity. If I took more — if I woke up at all, I’d wake up as a
vegetable.”

Vasili glanced toward the computer display. It disintegrated
and reformed into a sphere representing the ship’s immediate
surroundings. A star burned brightly just off center, and around it crept its
inner family of planets, their sizes exaggerated, their colors enhanced.

Vasili pointed to a tiny sapphire point, the second world
from the sun.

“That one —” The star dissolved through
the edge of the display, the planet’s image grew, and the world’s
parameters formed above it. “That one is habitable,” the pilot
said.

“No doubt you’ll get a discovery bonus,”
Radu said.

Vasili ignored the anger and sarcasm in Radu’s tone.
“That wasn’t what I was thinking of,” he said mildly,
“though for all of that you may be right.” After a long silence, he
continued. “With some luck,” he said, “with as much luck as I
have ever had at one time in my life, I’ll be able to get this ship home.
We went in and out of transit so fast… I’ve looked for this star.
The constellations aren’t mapped. We’re lost. When the ship dives I
may be able to figure out where we are then. There are… landmarks?
Anomalies and patterns. I can’t describe them to someone who hasn’t
seen them. It’s hard enough to talk about them to someone who has seen
them. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I’m afraid to try to take you
back in there. I’m afraid to try to take you home.”

Radu stared into the translucent image of the planet.
“You could… leave me in the truck. I could wait. They’re
always looking at new drugs, surely they have some in test that would
work.” He looked at Vasili. “They’d send someone back for me
— wouldn’t they?”

“I’ve never heard of this happening before —
but I’m sure they would,” Vasili said quickly. “If they can,
they will…”

“But —?”

“I could take us home fairly easily if I had this
system’s coordinates. I don’t. The first time we surfaced out of
transit the system was charted. Just barely, but I found it. The second time I
had to extrapolate — and I had my fingers crossed I’d done it
right. I don’t even know if I did or not, we fell out too fast for me to
get my bearings. Now… I don’t know where we are. There’s so much
interstellar dust, I can’t find any of the standard markers. I
can’t match up any of the star patterns or pulsars or anything else. This
isn’t an exploration ship, it isn’t prepared for involved analysis.
Even with an x ship, it’s safest to go in small steps. We’ve taken
a couple of very large ones.” He sounded more and more tense.
“Exploration isn’t as easy as going down a path and then turning
around and coming back. You can’t do that because when you turn around it
doesn’t look the same. Do you see?”

“No.”

Vasili lifted his hands, then dropped them, his shoulders
slumping. “It’s transit,” he said. “I can’t
explain it. I shouldn’t even try.”

“No trail looks the same coming back, but you can
still follow it. It’s harder work, but you can still swim up a river
after you float down.”

“Not if there are rapids — that’s exactly
it!” His expression brightened, then went grim again. “No, it
isn’t. It isn’t anything like that. It’s…” He
spread his hands helplessly.

“What you are telling me,” Radu said, “is
that since you don’t know where we are, even if you succeed in returning
to earth you may not be able to find your way back here.”

“I’ll take back all the normal space data. It
should be possible to figure out where this place is.”

“But you can’t be sure of that.”

Vasili hesitated. “I’m afraid not,” he
said reluctantly.

“I can stay behind in the truck and take the chance of
dying of starvation or asphyxiation, or I can try to go home, and die in
transit.”

“There’s a habitable planet —”

Radu glowered. “How stupid do you think I am?
I’m a colonist! I’m not such a fool to expect to survive on a new
world alone! Even if I could — why would I want to?”

“Are you such a fool to think you can survive
transit?”

“I’d rather die quickly than slowly.” He
spoke in anger, and only then realized he meant it.

“It isn’t that quick, as I understand it.”

“If I stay, what are the chances that someone will
ever come back for me?”

Vasili looked at the deck. “Getting home — I
can’t say. Maybe ten to one. Maybe a hundred. But the chances of finding
my way back here, if the position can’t be charted… that’s
nearly random.”

“Random!”

“I’m sorry. Transit —”

“Transit! Never mind. There is no chance at all.
Nothing.”

“I’m sorry!” Vasili cried. “I
don’t know what to tell you.” He turned away, and whispered,
“Maybe this is what happens to all the ships that are lost. Maybe transit
spits them out and never lets them back in.” He spoke like a hurt,
abandoned child, and Radu saw that never getting home again was not what the
pilot feared. His terror was the thought of never seeing transit again.

Radu reached out, but stopped before his hand brushed
Vasili’s shoulder. “You are the best pilot I’ve ever heard
of. Even Atna never saw one better, and he was in the crew since before there
were any pilots. You can take this ship home.”

“What about you? Getting back here doesn’t
depend on me,” Vasili said miserably. “Only on whether the system
can be charted. What about you?”

When Radu joined the crew, he knew ships were sometimes
lost. He knew people sometimes died in transit despite the drugs, and he knew
that the drugs themselves could kill. Like everyone else, he had prepared
himself for the, possibility that he might die. His only choice now was the
time and place, and where he would be buried.

“I’ve written my letter,” he said.
“There’s nothing I want to add to it.” He wanted to go home.
He wanted his ashes to be taken back to Twilight.

Vasili nodded, without turning around.

“Then we will try… when you are ready.”

Radu gazed through the port at the crowded stars around
them, at nothing. He wanted someone to be with him if he was going to die. He
wanted someone to hold his hand, to embrace him, to comfort him. He leaned
against the cool clear glass.

“Do you want me to stay here?” Vasili said.

Embarrassed by Vasili’s pity, and his own, Radu felt
the blood rising to his face.

“I think it would be better if you
didn’t,” he said. He wanted someone, but not a pilot — not
this pilot.

“All right,” Vasili said. He had waited a decent
interval to agree, but relief crept into his voice. Radu did not blame him for
being glad to stay away. Radu did not want to see how an ordinary person died
in transit either.

The pilot took his hand out of his pocket and awkwardly laid
a vial on the table.

“They give us that,” he said reluctantly.
“In case the ship gets lost and there’s no chance of getting home
or anywhere. If it gets too bad for you —” He stopped.

Radu nodded. A quick and easy suicide sounded tempting just
now. Perhaps the temptation would overcome him.

“Will I know? How long —”

Vasili laughed sharply.

In fury, his fists clenched, Radu took a quick step toward
him. Vasili held up his hands in defense. But Radu had already stopped.

“I’m sorry,” Vasili said. “I’m
terribly sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s only
that there’s no answer to your question. You can’t answer questions
like that about transit.”

Radu found Vasili’s statement hard to believe; he
thought it was just another way pilots had of keeping their secrets. But he
would not beg for an answer.

“I won’t start until you tell me,” Vasili
said.

“Just go on!” Radu yelled. “Hurry up!
It’s bad enough without having to wait for it.” He clenched his
hands around the rim of the port. After a moment, he heard the door close as
the pilot went into the control room.

In the port, the bright unfamiliar constellations blurred
and swam like the fish in the sea the last time Radu had pressed up against a
thick glass wall. That time he knew he must part with Laenea. This time he did
not know what would happen.

The ship vibrated against his fingers. He flattened his
hands against the wall, feeling the power of the engines. Fascinated in spite
of himself, he waited for whatever change would come. A drop of sweat trickled
down the side of his face. He ducked his head to wipe it off on his sleeve.
Unless he died instantly, he would at least have a few minutes to see what the
mystery was about transit. Though he had wondered, he had never asked. It did
not take much intuition or observation to discover that the pilots would not
tell.

The vibration of the engines rose to a peak. Radu’s
heart pounded. He cupped his hands around his face, shielding the port from the
room’s glare. Nothing outside changed: The stars, of course, did not
move. But slowly Radu did detect an alteration in the state of the universe
outside. The great jeweled white mass of stars around him shifted, brightened,
and intensified to brilliance so abruptly that Radu stepped back startled. He
blinked, and the universe faded to gray.

Radu touched the glass with the tips of his fingers. It
remained smooth and cool. But nothing lay beyond it, nothing at all. Radu
strained his eyes for any hint of movement, any unusual scene, the embodiment
of fantasies or nightmares, the perception of hidden truths. He closed his eyes
and concentrated on his other senses, waiting for some revelation, or even for
a warning of his own impending death.

But there was nothing.

Radu sat down again and waited. He looked at his hands,
watching for the skin to age and wrinkle. But they remained the same, brown and
square, peasant’s hands. Despite his name, if his family included
high-bred nobility, it was many generations back. His fingernails were short
and rough, and sometimes he bit them.

The vibration of the engines continued, smooth and steady,
otherwise Radu felt no sensation of movement. He let himself feel his time
sense, which had always expanded to include wherever he was at the moment. He
had never paid much attention to the ability: It was a party trick, at most an
anomalous and occasionally useful convenience. He could not teach anyone else
to do it, nor could he explain it.

Relativity required that time, as Radu perceived it, pass at
different rates in different places. He was used to that, and he was used to
feeling the changes intensify whenever he was on an accelerating ship. Here, in
transit, the underlying order had dissolved into chaos. Time passed in one
place at one rate, in another at another, but when he thought about the first
again the hierarchy had changed. How he perceived that there was a change, he did
not know. It was like being in a dark room, surrounded by moving sculptures,
able to look at each piece only for a moment as a single light rested on one,
blinked off, and blinked on illuminating another in a random order, at dizzying
speed.

He stopped trying to sort out his perceptions and waited
quietly until he regained his equilibrium. Then he focused his attention on
subjective time alone. To his surprise, it felt and behaved exactly as it would
have if he had been in any other place. Pilots were said to experience a
perturbation of their time sense in transit, but perhaps that was the result of
the changes they submitted to in freeing themselves from the disparity between
relativistic time in normal space, and the nonrelativistic universe of transit.