“We take off in thirty-six minutes.” Alex was looking only at Generalov, and the navigator reluctantly hushed. “I ask everyone to be at their posts in twenty minutes.”
“What’s the route?” hissed the navigator.
“It won’t be a problem for you. We’re flying first to Zodiac, and then to Edem. The honorable Zzygou wish to see the most beautiful planets of the human sector.”
Generalov furrowed his brow.
And Kim turned noticeably pale.
“Any special instructions for this flight?” inquired Morrison. “Gravity levels, inertia parameters, jump rhythms?”
“No, nothing. The Zzygou tolerate the human environment well. Any other questions?” No one had any questions. “You all are free to go.”
Generalov, murmuring something under his breath, was the first to leave the lounge. Then Paul followed him, obviously distressed by the conflict and his own participation in it. Morrison looked sidelong at Kim, but she remained sitting as before.
“I’ll go test the ship,” said the co-pilot, and left.
“What’s wrong, Kim?” Alex came closer to the girl.
“You …”
“Forgive me, Kim. I can explain …”
“I don’t want to fly to Edem!” cried Kim.
She seemed to have forgotten about the conversation between Alex and Xang.
“Kim, it’s unavoidable. You’re a spesh. You’re a member of the crew now, so you have to go by the contract.”
“Alex, don’t you get it!? I cannot show up on Edem! I simply can’t!” The girl’s eyes were bright with tears.
Alex gently took her by the shoulder. “Kim, for now, we’re flying to Zodiac. It’s a marvelous planet. The most beautiful one in the human sector, even though your home world might dispute the claim. Do you have anything against Zodiac?”
“No …” Kim leaned forward, pressed herself to Alex’s chest. A frightened little girl … it didn’t matter now that she was capable of killing off the entire crew. “Alex, friend-spesh, I don’t want to fly to Edem!”
“Kim, I have a lot of problems as it is. Janet hates the Others. Generalov hates clones. If you start …” He stopped short of finishing the phrase.
The girl was quiet, hugging him and hiding her face, wet with tears.
“Kim, we’re flying to Zodiac. You hear? We’ll have time to discuss all this. If push comes to shove, we’ll think of something. You could stay on Zodiac, for instance, you could take a few days off … sick leave, maybe?”
“Fighter-speshes never get sick,” Kim informed him. “Well … almost never.”
“We’ll ask Janet … surely she’ll understand your situation?”
“Probably …” Kim’s voice sounded a little calmer. “But I won’t return to Edem! I’d rather jump right out into open space!”
“Kim. We’ll think of something. But for now, please help me, okay? I need your support, friend-spesh.”
The look in Kim’s eyes, when she lifted her face to look at him, was triumphant.
“Will you ever again tell Xang that he can hit on me?”
“I said that knowing you would reject him,” said Alex, almost honestly.
“You better watch out, I might just be tempted. He’s a stud,” purred Kim.
Alex forced a laugh.
“Really? I thought you liked our engineer.”
Kim snorted. “That pink piglet? He’s still just a baby! No, he’s nice, but he’s still a kid. Generalov is much more interesting, but he isn’t interested in me … All right, friend-spesh, I’ll be going to my cabin. My stuff is all over the place. I have to anchor everything, right?”
“That’s the rule. Just in case.”
“But I won’t fly to Edem,” said Kim on her way out. Alex sat down. He wanted a drink, but in twenty minutes he had to be in charge of the ship. Besides, everything had already been cleared off the table.
He had never imagined that being a captain would entail these kinds of conversations. What a stupid tradition it was to appoint pilots to be captains! They should appoint psychologists. Or was it just his luck to have a whole crew of weirdos? Did problems like these ever come up on any other ships of the fleet?
Alex rolled up his sleeve to look at the Demon. The little devil was holding its head in its hands. It was wincing, as though it was suffering from a terrible headache.
And Alex realized that what bothered him was not so much the conversation that had just taken place, but the fact that he still had to talk to Janet. A woman who had almost become his friend and was now caught in the worst kind of trap—a conflict between her spesh duties and the program of behavior precoded into her subconscious mind.
“There’s no time,” said Alex. Got up and went to the sick bay.
The door was unlocked. Janet was sitting in a chair and holding her head in her hands, just like the little tattoo on his arm. As he entered, she looked at him and said in a quiet voice:
“The sick bay is ready for take-off and for receiving patients.”
Alex sat down on the floor in front of her. Stretched out his arm to show her the Demon.
“You see this?”
Janet nodded.
“Do you know what this is?”
“An emotion scanner … I’ve seen them …” she replied in a colorless voice. Then a look of concern appeared on her face. “What’s wrong, Captain?”
“You have a problem. You hate the Others. Generalov has a problem. He hates clones. Kim has a problem. We are under orders to fly to Edem, and she doesn’t want to go there. And I am your captain. All of your problems are my problems now.”
Janet rubbed her forehead wearily.
“Captain … Alex, don’t worry about me. I can handle it.”
“Janet, are you sure?”
“Yes, Alex. I do hate the Others, those Zzygou things especially. They were our first targets, you understand. But I can handle it. Even if I have to wait their tables.”
Alex looked searchingly at the woman.
“Everything will be fine,” she repeated, with a little more conviction in her tone. “Of course, I was shocked. I am a soldier of Eben. But even a soldier doesn’t have to rush headlong into a fight. I can control myself, Alex. Don’t worry.”
“Then I have only two problems left: Generalov and Kim.”
“I’ll try to sort it out with Kim. She seems to listen to me.”
“Thanks.” Alex lightly touched her hand. “Friend-spesh, thanks for your understanding and self-restraint. We take off in fourteen and a half minutes. I have to go.”
“Will you need me at my battle station?”
“No, not really. The space around Quicksilver Pit is well patrolled, so there’s no real danger.”
“But I’d like to be at my post, anyway.”
“All right. I’ll be glad to see you, Janet.”
Alex smiled at the woman and left the sick bay. Looked like there was one less problem to worry about. Or was there?
Janet had been convincing, but could she really control herself?
He had no other choice but to trust her word.
“Accept me.”
He became one with the ship.
And somehow, all that had been bothering him disappeared. All the problems—Kim’s, Janet’s, Puck’s—were really minor things, barely worth noticing, in comparison to the warmth of the ship’s gentle wave.
It must be very similar to love …
Too bad he couldn’t really compare the two.
His crew were specks of colored light in the darkness. His ship—his powerful body. And the ship’s consciousness was still something separate … but it was closer and more important than his own thoughts.
Could he have ever really been happy without experiencing this? Yes … Because he had been happy being just a pilot. And had his parents chosen another specialization for him, he would’ve been happy working in a factory, or demonstrating models on a podium, or collecting edible seaweed in the ocean. He would ha
ve been happy regardless, for happiness was a necessary attribute of being a spesh.
Still, how glad he was that what made him happy were the stars, and flying among them, and all these mechanisms and bionics, interwoven to form an expensive toy called a spaceship!
“Passengers, please prepare for take-off. We are leaving the surface of the planet in seven minutes.”
Alex had never before been a captain on a passenger ship. But his memory easily supplied the necessary phrases.
“Time to orbit—twelve minutes, thirty-two seconds. Time to tunnel—forty-four minutes. We will be making an intermediate jump to Gamma Snakebearer, the transport center of the third sector. After that, our route lies through New Ukraine, Heraldica, and Zodiac. Other intermediate landings are possible at the passengers’ request. Our estimated total flight time is twenty-nine hours, thirteen minutes. The crew wishes you a pleasant flight.”
He waited another ten seconds, in case there were any additional orders or questions from the passengers, and then turned off the connection.
All right. That was it. The route had been approved, and now he had complete control over the ship.
Generalov had already made the route viewable to everyone. It was the very route he had practiced plotting that morning.
Alex reached out through the eternal night of virtual space. Touched Generalov, getting his attention. Ordered:
“Private channel.”
A moment later, his consciousness split in two. He was still the root of the ship getting ready for take-off. He was watching the last preliminary tests, feeling the reactor powering up … but at the same time he stood face to face with Generalov. Around them was nothing but darkness. This talk would be just between the two of them, and no other crewmembers knew about it.
“Navigator, I have a serious question for you.”
“I am listening, Captain.” Puck’s virtual image nodded.
“Please leave out the formalities. I’d like a heart-to-heart.”
Generalov looked aside in embarrassment. And said after a pause:
“I am sorry about my outburst. But … I really don’t care for clones.”
“We all have somebody we don’t care for, Puck. Some people don’t like naturals, some don’t like the Others. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”
“I see,” Puck nodded. “It’s about the route?”
“Yes. I believe that coincidences happen. But everything has a limit. You already plotted this route once today.”
“I was practicing.”
“And you just happened to choose this exact route? Quicksilver Pit-Zodiac-Edem?”
“Yes!”
“Puck, that’s impossible.”
“What are you trying to say, Alex?” Generalov certainly enjoyed being informal. “Are you suggesting that I actually knew about our route beforehand?”
“Of course.”
The navigator burst out laughing.
“You overestimate me. I really was just practicing. The whole crew was practicing, and so was I. You can suspect whatever you want, but I really did choose that route entirely by chance!”
“Puck, that’s impossible. If you’re telling me the truth—can you see why I have my doubts?”
Generalov lapsed into thought.
“I do understand, Captain. I was also really surprised. I was plotting a course … let me see … well, I picked Edem because of our lovely bodyguard.”
“Okay, I suppose that’s plausible. But using Zodiac as an intermediary point? How do you explain that?”
For a moment, Puck’s image got blurry—he must have been calculating all the possibilities. Alex could almost feel the ship’s computer strain to handle the extra burden.
“I have to agree with you,” reluctantly admitted Generalov. “It’s a really good route, Quicksilver Pit-Zodiac-Edem, but there are five more alternatives. None are better than any others—all are within random probability parameters. All I can tell you is that I really did choose this particular one by pure chance.”
“Puck, tell me: before you went into the navigation module, had anyone even mentioned Zodiac in your presence?”
A short hesitation.
“No.”
One minute to take-off.
Alex nodded. He had a lingering, unpleasant sensation—the feeling of having missed something.
“All right, Puck. Let’s get back to work.” He cut off the private connection and concentrated on the ship. Flight control had already given the last corrections for the take-off corridor. The ship’s reactor was slowly increasing its power output, releasing energy to be accumulated and used up by the ship. Lourier’s job was to supply a lot of power, but also not to supply too much.
“Countdown.”
Morrison had already plotted the graceful curve of the take-off trajectory and was waiting with tense anticipation. Alex understood his hopes … he knew the feeling. But he could not let the co-pilot perform his own very first take-off.
“Ten.”
He reached for the tense green spiral and whispered:
“Sorry …”
The spiral moved off to one side, giving Alex full access to the piloting gear.
“Nine.”
The membranes of the plasma thrusters opened.
“Eight.”
The grid of the gravitational engine opened. Of course, no one was planning to take off riding a graviray, which would damage the old launch pad. But for the improbable eventuality of plasma-engine failure, the ship had to have an emergency option.
“Seven.”
Alex’s consciousness reached out to touch each member of his crew, ever so lightly, a brief, reassuring, and grateful contact.
“Six.”
The gluon reactor started pulsing, boosting the energy output. Paul had a wonderful sense of timing… .
“Five.”
Alex turned on the engines.
The ship smoothly leaned on its tail, not leaving the surface yet, but standing on its hind supports alone. Gravity compensation worked perfectly, so there was no change in the gravity vector within the ship itself.
“Four.”
A firestorm burst out around the vessel.
“Three.”
The ship quivered, leaving the surface.
“Two.”
They were already standing “in the pillar.” The ship still looked chained to the planet to an outside observer, when really it had already broken free.
“One.”
The energy flooded into the engines, throwing them into full-power mode.
“Zero. Take-off.”
And they were airborne. The ship was piercing the sky with a swift thrust, no longer bound by gravity, or any orders from flight control, or laws of Quicksilver Pit. Somewhere below them were the dirty and malodorous capital, the honorable president San Li, the smog-blackened sky, speshes and naturals, astronauts and planet-dwellers, humans and Others.
Only the ship remained, and the seven humans and two Others aboard it, and the invisible route charted among the stars.
The parting clouds dabbed the ship’s body. The city below them diffused into a murky, glowing blot. It even looked rather pretty from the dark distance… . At sixteen thousand feet, Alex switched over to the graviray and the vessel gave a slight jolt. Darn it! Botched a smooth transition.
“Nice transition, Captain,” said Morrison, as if to calm him down; a slight jolt when switching to another set of engines was almost inevitable. But at the same time, Morrison was reminding him, “I noticed.”
Alex grinned, increasing the traction. Glanced at an Otter coming in for landing through the adjacent corridor. The narrow cone of the gravity engine’s thrusting field trailed behind the ship, and the computer traced an alarming red around its outer edges. The cone presented little danger to any ship that might sideswipe it. At the very worst, there might be minor damage to the skin plating, which would regenerate overnight. And the unwritten laws of the pilots’ fraternity would
most probably prevent any official involvement. What’s more, they were well within their own take-off corridor, so it had to be the mistake of the tanker’s pilot. But to allow this kind of situation was considered bad form.
“Co-pilot, that Otter is getting into our tail. Track them.”
Xang started murmuring something at the clowns piloting the tanker. Concentrating on his own tasks, Alex paid no more attention to him.
Mirror was as light as a feather in comparison to the heavy, multi-ton vessels he had piloted for the last few years. Alex couldn’t help remembering an old book that described the ecstasy of a boy who kicked off his heavy winter boots and put on a pair of light summer shoes. Now he was feeling something very much like it.
A lightness. The universe had become not just the place where he lived, but a home he knew and loved, small and cozy, where everything was close to everything else and where he knew every little corner. Even the ship’s responses to his orders were not just precise executions of his commands, but happy continuations of his thoughts. Not a servant, but a friend. Not a machine, but a beloved.
He had experienced this kind of thing a long time ago, before his metamorphosis, when he was still an almost-ordinary kid. He would leave the house with his posse, stay out till late. Sometimes they’d be gone for several days, traveling into the thick northern forests and as far as the Baltic Sea, where they would lie on the jagged cliffs and look down from on high, through the clear water, onto the ruins of ancient cities that hadn’t survived the first ecological storm. “The gang” were five friends. Alex himself. The dark-skinned, redheaded David, who emigrated to New Jerusalem at the age of fourteen, right after his metamorphosis. Builder-speshes were in great demand there. Fam Hoh … poor Fam, he was also a spesh, a fighter-spesh. He died at fifteen, barely out of the academy, taking part in a peacekeeping mission in the Martian Free Cities. He was shot down over the desert, far from the terraformer towers, had to walk back for twenty-four hours, but died, of dehydration, hypothermia, and oxygen starvation. Gene was the only natural in their whole gang, so he was always the butt of their cruel childish jokes, and at the same time the object of their clumsy sympathy … he wanted to become a psychologist. Maybe he did, who knows… . And then there was Nadia, his devoted girlfriend, his first lover, his best friend … She was now a well-known and successful doctor-spesh. But back then, she seemed to have two separate and unrelated lives. When she was with the rest of the gang, she was a fighter daredevil, their total buddy, with whom you could share a heart-to-heart talk and have a smooch or two in a dark little corner. But at home she was always a perfect, sweet, reserved, well-behaved girl …