said, hardly able to control his voice, "I will probably hurt you badly, seeing how much you cared for Direk."
"What...?" Zakiya tried to form a question.
"It was actually not Direk you cared for," Direk said. "It was me. It was not Direk that Jamie knew. It was me. The original Direk died. I am his first copy. And his last copy."
Zakiya gazed downward for several moments. Direk could not understand what her reaction was. She reached for his hand and grasped it firmly. She wiped her eyes with her other hand. When she turned her gaze upward to Direk she was smiling faintly. "I think this was what Mai and Aylis wanted to tell me but couldn't, Direk. They must have suspected something from the tests they did on you. Somehow I am prepared for this. My response is: Who are any of us but copies of who we were? And often we are not even who we were!"
"This is some relief for me," Direk said. "I don't know what I will do. I need to put it aside, for the moment. There will be a better time ahead and perhaps I will find more courage."
"Jamie doesn't know you," Zakiya said thoughtfully. "Nobody really knows you. But I'm beginning to see... Aside from being a copy, your mother doesn't know you!"
"Mother is the other subject I wanted to discuss. What happened to her? She seems depressed. Is it because of me?"
Zakiya reluctantly started describing the key events Direk had missed. He absorbed the information with Zakiya studying his reaction. It was never, of course, a secret that he could feel emotions as deeply as anyone. But the display of emotion was deemed theatrical and coercive by elite Essiin. Perhaps few such Essiin realized how well their demeanor was applied by Navy admirals, corrupting it into a blank stare of menace and hidden motives.
"I don't know what to do for Aylis," Zakiya said. "Most of the time I think she will heal. Mai told me she's pregnant."
"Raped!" Direk said angrily. "Pregnant! And now she also knows her real son is dead!"
"Etrhnk threatened to remove me from the Freedom unless she... I can't imagine how she felt! I don't know why she's still carrying the fetus. I can't get her to speak to me about it or talk to an AI psychiatrist. She avoids me almost all the time now and I worry so much about her. Will you try to talk to her?"
"I don't think I can help her. You're her closest friend. If she won't talk to you, she won't talk to a son who is a stranger to her." It was a horrible concept, his mother being pregnant by rape. He could barely realize how dangerous his distraction was becoming, with the conversion process for the ship requiring his close attention. With Pan detained on Earth by Etrhnk and the only other copy self-terminated, Direk alone possessed the skill and knowledge to solve problems with the ship modification - even assuming the skill and knowledge still existed in his brain or auxiliary memory. Without Pan... Was anyone else missing? That thought startled him again with the chilling doubt it brought with it. There was someone else missing from the crew, someone other than Pan! He almost grasped who it might be, and then it was erased from his thoughts by Jon Horss.
/
"Hey, kid, are you done talking to the Boss?" Horss startled Zakiya and Direk as he walked up behind them. They are probably discussing Jamie, Horss thought. Direk looked unhappy. Wasn't that unusual for him? Horss wished he could meddle in the affair of the heart of Direk and Jamie. He wanted everyone to be as happy as he was. But he had promised Jamie to give her time to understand herself.
"Jon!" Zakiya complained. "Sometimes I wonder about you!"
"Only sometimes? That's progress! Direk, please forgive the interruption. If you have more to say to her, I'll wait in the roses."
"I think your timing was perfect," Direk said. "We had just reached a stopping point."
"Well, this is my lucky day! I talked Miss Perfect into marrying me!"
"Mai?" Zakiya's expressive eyes widened in expectation of being correct.
"My Mai, yes!"
"Wonderful! How did you trick her?"
"Uh." Horss felt acutely guilty. No matter how old Mai was or how sweet her apology for becoming and remaining pregnant, Horss was responsible in his own eyes. He deserved to suffer the guilt and was reluctant to threaten Mai with guilt by association with him. Still, she was determined to have the baby and people would form opinions. "She's pregnant," he finally said.
"Her, too? I didn't know!"
"It's all your fault." Horss was sinfully willing to obscure the less honorable aspect: it was a hell of a time and place to bring a new life into the universe. "I would never have met her if you hadn't shanghaied me and killed me. Then you sang for us at the Opera and so distracted Mai, that she forgot the state of her reproductive system."
"And you share no part of the blame, Jon?"
"I got lucky! Do you blame a sailor for that? Will you marry us?"
"Only if you love each other."
"Please, forgive my crudeness. I love Mai. I don't know why, but she says she loves me!"
"Usually it's the ship's captain who performs a marriage ceremony, but I think the ranking officer aboard should be allowed. When do you want to do it?"
"As soon as possible! I want to be a husband and expectant father at least for the little time we have before this magic ship jumps into oblivion."
"It won't do that," Direk objected. "You trust starlight drive and it's only a step or two below what we're about to do."
"You're talking to a guy who came up through the enlisted ranks, got promoted into the Academy, and almost flunked Basic Starlight Drive Theory. Which is awfully hard to do when it's given to you in an augment!"
"Do you understand how a gravity plate works?" Direk asked.
"Who does? What's that to do with jumpships?"
"You know there are microscopic synchronized pendulums."
"I know that much, yes. And there is something like artificial intelligence in each one."
"I think they manipulate the statistical probabilities of zero relative velocity," Direk said.
"What's so special about zero relative velocity? It happens all the time."
"It happens at the macroscopic level based approximately on Newton's equation involving mass and distance. It must also happen at the atomic level but the mechanism is obscured by many other force interactions between and within atoms. All we see is a scrambled mess of attraction and repulsion between the many particle entities. Gravity somehow dips into that chaos and takes hold of something for an instant. We know it's a statistical process, a game of chance. I think the hook of gravity is simply due to a timing event. I think the event is completely described by zero relative velocity."
"Between what?" Horss asked. "It can't be like magnetism."
"I don't think there is any real difference between the forces of magnetism and gravity. I think the same field lines are at work, just in a very different pattern, one constant and one intermittent. Gravity is actually an intermittent force with a cumulative effect that seems constant."
"So gravity is an attraction between individual atoms?" Horss asked.
"Between the parts of the nuclei of atoms," Direk replied. "Atomic particles must have differing topologies, but whatever the particles are, we are calling them entities, and in addition to their topology they have a quantum circuit loop. The jump drive creates a huge entity, with a quantum circuit loop proportionally large. The starlight drive does something similar, with the heading notch, where the quantum circuit loop emerges to attach to star light. In the case of the jump drive, we apparently make a second jump entity that is projected at a controllable distance and direction, and they are connected by a quantum loop. They have zero relative velocity for an instant."
"Will they be pulled together?" Horss asked. "What happens?"
"Gravity plates change the statistics of their entities to increase the occurrences of zero relative velocities and grab people and objects above them. The jump drive apparently takes advantage of another unknown property of the universe that is triggered by zero relative velocity. My theory is that, since an absolute positional frame of reference is impo
ssible, entities that do not move relative to each other are ambiguous as to absolute location. The connecting quantum circuit points the way to what may be a target in a different universe."
"So we are neither here nor there for an instant," Horss said, rubbing his forehead and glancing at Zakiya with his gray eyes widened in humorous reaction. "Then we are in a different but similar universe?"
"As simple as that," Direk replied, smiling.
"Will it help to pray?" Horss asked. "Because I really want to live to see my baby."
"Jumpship technology is less magical than your baby," Direk said. "The miracle of life and existence dwarfs everything."
"I have no more time for metaphysical physics," Zakiya said with an impatient sigh. "I'm on my way to bring Sammy home from the hospital."
She hugged Horss firmly, then she hugged him gently, patting him on the back. She kissed him. He was just barely able to keep himself from picking her up as an expression of his feelings for her and for the legitimacy she had given to his life. Hell, why should he want to keep from picking her up? He lifted her off her feet and pivoted, almost knocking Direk down with Zakiya's swinging legs.
"I'm so happy for you, Jon!" she declared as he finally set her down.
Just as Zakiya disengaged from Horss, Aylis came into view, walking down the steps from the hospital. They waited for her to reach them. As Horss observed the subtle pain Aylis felt, expressed in the solemn manner of her pace and posture, he also saw her strength and