"I'm sorry, you must think me dreadfully rude. I've been on my feet for thirty-six hours. I've only just returned from my holiday. It's been planes and airport lounges all day, I'm afraid."
They went through the door into a well-lit corridor. Fabian was waiting by a lift.
"That sounds most interesting," Jason Whitehurst said. "I shall enjoy hearing all about your travels tomorrow over lunch."
Charlotte 's heart sank.
The lift door hummed open. Everything was made out of composite, she noted—walls, floor, ceiling.
"Fabian, I think you had better see your lady guest to one of the spare cabins for tonight," Jason Whitehurst said. "Dear Charlotte is terribly tired. I think she needs a night's rest. She can move into your room tomorrow."
And that cleared up any possible ambiguities about the situation, Charlotte thought. Clever of him, reassuring his son in front of her.
Fabian's face fell. "Yes, Father."
She shared the lift with Fabian. He kept giving her fast glances, suddenly nervous again. She thought she'd succeeded in putting him at ease while they were dancing. "How old are you?" he asked quickly. "I mean. . . you don't have to say. Not if you don't want to."
"I'm twenty-one, Fabian."
"Oh." He stared at the stainless-steel control panel beside the door. "I was fifteen a few months back, actually. Well more like nine months, really."
According to the data profile Baronski had squirted over to her, Fabian had celebrated his fifteenth birthday barely a fortnight ago. "That's nice."
Fabian blushed. "Why?"
"Because people will still treat you like a kid. But you're not. It means you can get away with murder."
His jaw worked silently for a moment. "Ah, yes, right."
The lift doors opened on the gondola's upper deck. He showed her down a long corridor to her cabin. She began to wonder again about the size of the Colonel Maitland.
"Thank you, Fabian," she said when the cabin door slid open.
"Sleep as long as you want. There's nothing rigid about meals on board. The cooks will always get you something to eat whenever you ask them. That's what they're here for." He flipped the hair from his eyes. "Would you like to come swimming with me tomorrow?"
"Swimming? In an airship? What do you do, jump into the sea?"
Just for a moment a genuine fifteen-year-old's grin flashed over his face. "No, nothing like that. I'll show you."
"Sounds fun. That's a date, then."
* * * *
She woke to the faintest of buzzing sounds, having to concentrate hard to be certain she wasn't imagining it. It seemed to rise and fall in some strange cycle of its own. There was no accompanying vibration. She thought it might be the propellers.
Her cabin was stylish and luxuriant, vaguely reminiscent of a nineteenth-century steamship. Wooden dresser and chests, mossy sapphire carpet, biolum globes like giant opals, pictures of pre-Warming landscapes on the walls. Three sets of mulberry curtains along one wall emitted a dull glow. A remote unit was sitting on the bedside cabinet.
She found the button for the curtains, and rolled off the bed as they drew apart, revealing long rectangular windows with brass frames.
Colonel Maitland was cruising three or four kilometres above the Mediterranean. The water below shone with a rich clear blue hue, while wave-tops shimmered brightly creating a silver glare. She had never flown over the Mediterranean like this before. Hypersonics flew so high and fast that details blurred to non-existence, seas were reduced to a formless blue plane. But this view was hypnotic. She could see ships down there, trailing long V-shaped wakes; bulk cargo carriers, rusty splinters no bigger than her thumb nail.
There was a light tapping on the door. Charlotte looked round the cabin, and saw a towelling robe on the foot of the bed. She slipped into it.
"Come in."
It was a maid, a woman in her early thirties, dressed in a plain black knee-length tunic, her mouse-brown hair wound into a neat bun. She curtsied. And she got it right, too, Charlotte noticed.
"Did madam have a pleasant rest?" The maid's English was slightly accented. Slavonic?
"There's no need for that nonsense in private," Charlotte said.
"Madam?"
That hurt. Formality was the way a patron's household staff told her they thought she was on a social stratum way below them, about equal to the family pets. Dumb, pampered, and good at tricks. "I had a very pleasant rest. Is the rest of the ship up and about?"
"It is nearly eleven o'clock, madam."
Charlotte blinked in surprise. When she looked out of the windows again she saw the sun was well up in the sky.
She cocked her head at it, finding something vaguely disconcerting about its appearance. Whatever the anomaly was, she couldn't quantify it.
"Mr. Whitehurst is expecting me for lunch," Charlotte said. "What time is that?"
"Twelve fifty, madam."
Charlotte ran her hands through her hair. "I'll take a shower first. Where are my clothes?" The gown she'd worn to the Newfields ball was draped over a chair. She'd been so tired last night she couldn't be bothered even to find a hanger for it. Now the material was probably creased beyond rescue.
The maid opened a drawer. Charlotte recognized some of her clothes folded neatly. When had that been done?
"Would madam like me to assist in the bathroom? I am a trained manicurist."
"You know how to do hair as well?"
A slight bow.
"Good, in that case you can give me a hand." And get that nice clean tunic all wet and soapy as well.
The maid slid open a varnished pine door to reveal a bathroom. It was all marbled surfaces and extravagant potted ferns.
The marble must be fake, Charlotte decided. They couldn't possibly afford the weight, not even in this airship. Jason Whitehurst giving his guests fake marble. She grinned.
"Mr. Jason said to be sure your choice of day attire was a suitable one for a companion of Master Fabian's," the maid said. Her face was beautifully composed. "I took the liberty of laying out one or two of the briefer items from madam's wardrobe. I hope they meet with your approval, there were so many to select from."
"Why, thank you, I'm sure your knowledge in that area is unmatched." Charlotte swept regally into the bathroom. One all. But it was shaping up like a long dirty war.
Lunch was difficult. They ate in the aft dining-room on the gondola's upper deck; looking out at the stern of the airship. Charlotte discovered she had been quite right about the Colonel Maitland, it was vast; seven hundred metres long, a hundred and twenty in diameter. Its fuselage was made up from sheets of solar cells, a glossy black envelope reflecting narrow ripples of sunlight in mimicry of the sea below.
Jason Whitehurst sat at the head of the table, with his back to the curving band of windows. Charlotte and Fabian sat on either side of him, facing each other. Fabian was doing his best not to stare. But once or twice she thought she caught that glint of anticipation on his face again.
As she worked her spoon into the avocado starter Charlotte watched the translucent blur of the contra-rotating fans at the stern. The Colonel Maitland was making a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. She hadn't known airships could travel so fast, her mind classing them as lumbering dinosaurs.
"Oh no, not at all," Jason Whitehurst said when she mentioned it. "Even the previous generation of rigid airships in the nineteen-thirties were reaching speeds around a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. Flat out, the Colonel Maitland can make a hundred and eighty. It used to cruise at about a hundred and fifty when it was on the trans-Pacific passenger run."
"This was a passenger ship?" she asked.
"Yes. Airships came into their own after the Warming and the Energy Crunch. Damnable era, that one, the whole world went positively insane for over a decade. Still, I expect that was before your time, my dear. And very fortunate you were too, missing it. But after the jet fleets were grounded by impossibly expensive fuel, beauties like the
old Colonel were all we had until Event Horizon cracked the giga-conductor's molecular structure. After that, of course, everybody went bloody speed mad. Hypersonics, spaceplanes; nothing but rush and bustle. One shouldn't complain, one supposes; the world is a better place now, so everyone says. But airships have such class. That's why I couldn't resist buying this old chap when it came on the market."
Charlotte took a sip of her white wine. This assignment was turning into a complete waste of time. Jason Whitehurst spent most of his time on board the Colond Maitland, so he said, only touching the ground for parties like the Newfields ball and other social events, the occasional business meeting. His trading empire was mostly handled by his cargo agents, and ninety per cent of his financial business conducted via private satellite relays. That didn't bode well at all. A large part of her arrangement with Baronski was listening to table talk. It was amazing what premier-grade kombinate executives and company chairmen would say when they were relaxed in a convivial atmosphere, safe amongst their own. Of course, they didn't expect her to follow a word of what they were saying. Youth, a pretty face, and a perfect figure equals no brain at all. So the next day she would call up Baronski, and he played the bytes of insider knowledge on the stock markets. Charlotte only got two per cent on that deal, but it would often come to more than the price her patron's gifts brought in.
Except now there were no guests on board, nor any prospect of them before they reached Odessa. And Fabian was supposed to be her patron; the only gifts she was likely to get from him would be rock concert tickets and a Playboy channel subscription.
One of the waiters brought her a chicken salad. Charlotte waited until Jason Whitehurst started eating, then tucked in. Her usual patrons, with their overhanging bellies and multiplying chins, tended to become irritable when they saw her nibbling at her food while they chomped their way through five-course meals, it showed them up. So she had had her digestive enzymes alerted with biochemicals to reduce her digestion rate; now it didn't matter how much she ate, she didn't put on weight. With slenderness guaranteed, a simple regimen of light exercise was all she needed to keep her ballerina muscle tone.
"So where did you take this holiday of yours?" Jason Whitehurst asked.
"New London."
"No, really?" Fabian stopped eating, his fork halfway to his mouth. "You mean the asteroid?"
"Yes."
The boy's eyes shone. "What's it like?"
Charlotte moistened her lips with the wine again. "Formidable. The flight out leaves you with a most peculiar impression; it's both big and small at the same time. On the approach you see this huge mountain of rock adrift in space halfway out to the moon. Then, inside, it's a tiny little world-let, the centre hollowed out and planted with trees and grass and crops. Yet even that is big, because you can see it all, and know how small you are by comparison."
"Crikey. I'd like to get up there myself sometime."
"When you're older," Jason Whitehurst said.
"Yes, Father."
Jason Whitehurst reached over, and ruffled the boy's hair. "Ah, impatience of youth. Just wait a few more years, Fabian, you can do what you like after that. Tell your poor old father to get stuffed then."
Fabian did a half-squirm below his father's hand, glancing anxiously at Charlotte, so obviously fearful of how she would interpret the gesture. Daddy's little boy.
"I imagine there can't be very much to do up there," Jason Whitehurst said.
"Oh no, there's much more to it than the microgee industries and Event Horizon's mineral mining operation," Charlotte said. "They're trying to develop it as a finance and tourist centre."
"Good heavens, a sort of Disneyland in orbit, that kind of thing?"
"Not quite, it's rather more exclusive than that. They have casinos, nightclubs, if anything it's rather like a giant cabana club."
"Sounds ghastly," Jason Whitehurst muttered.
"And there's zero gee, as well," Charlotte said.
"From what I've been given to understand, it makes people sick."
"Not much nowadays, the medical people have got the anti-nausea drugs worked out fairly well. They had to. Sports form a big part of the attraction. There are a lot of games that you can play in the various low gee terraces. Tennis, badminton, squash, handball; they're all a lot of fun up there. The ball travels completely differently, you have to develop a whole new set of reflexes to cope. And then there's the fall surfing, that's worth the price of the ticket alone. You must have seen it on the channels."
Jason Whitehurst dabbed at his mouth with a linen napkin. "Yes. Well that settles it, I certainly won't be going. I'm far too old to learn anything new."
"Oh, come on, Father. It sounds terrific."
"Maybe for your sixteenth birthday."
"Great!"
"I said maybe." Jason sat back as the waiter removed his plate. "You obviously enjoyed yourself up there, my dear?"
"Yes. I'd like to go back."
Jason Whitehurst pulled thoughtfully at his beard as he looked at her. "How long were you up there for?"
"Ten days."
"I see. And then straight from the spaceport to the Newfields ball. You were in a bit of a rush, weren't you?"
Charlotte didn't like the way he was asking her questions, it wasn't polite conversation-making any more. "I support the Newfields charity, it means a lot to me."
"Dead boring, though," Fabian said. "Except when we were dancing," he added hurriedly.
"Thank you," Charlotte smiled at him.
"Do you still want to come swimming?"
It was the third time he'd asked. Charlotte had finally twigged why he was so persistent: swimming meant bikinis. Devious old Fabian. "I certainly do, yes."
"Not until you've digested your lunch," Jason Whitehurst said. "Why don't you show Charlotte round the old Colonel first."
* * * *
The gondola was a hundred metres long, thirty wide, with two decks containing all the cabins, lounges, and staff quarters. Fabian led her down the central corridors, opening various doors. The flight centre was at the front of the lower deck, a big room with panoramic windows; three bored officers monitored the airship's systems on five horseshoe-consoles. Fabian introduced her to them, then they went up into the main hull.
"This is where it gets interesting," Fabian said as they climbed a short flight of stairs at the rear of the gondola, right above the dining-room they'd had lunch in.
The stairs came out on to a narrow composite walkway with a rail at waist height, illuminated by a row of biolum strips. Charlotte was standing in a three-metre gap between a spherical helium balloon and the solar cell envelope. Long girders made from improbably thin monolattice carbon struts curved away on both sides, disappearing into darkness. The walkway was a narrow thread of light which stretched out into infinity fore and aft.
She shivered from the cool air. The gap seemed to suck sound away.
Fabian started walking towards the stern. "There are nine of these big spherical gasbags," he said, pointing up, "and two smaller ones in the conical sections at both ends."
Charlotte pressed her hand against the blue-grey roof of plastic. It felt tacky, slightly cooler than the surrounding air.
"Then there's these ten doughnut-shaped ones spaced between the spheres, so we don't waste any volume," Fabian continued. They were underneath a deep curving valley where the spherical gasbag pressed up against a doughnut, taut wires securing both of them to the monolattice spars.
Charlotte let him guide her, not really listening to the details of what she was seeing. Fabian found a walkway leading off at right angles to the main one. It began to curve upwards. She was soon climbing a ladder to another walkway halfway up the side of the fuselage.
"I'm sorry about the way the staff treated you," Fabian said. "It was jolly rude."
Charlotte watched him flip the hair out of his eyes. She hadn't realized he'd noticed the chill of the waiters as they served her at lunch, not many did. "They don't c
ount," she said.
He considered this. "Oh. Does it happen to you a lot?"
"Sometimes."
There were more turns, another flight of stairs. They arrived at a doorway. Charlotte didn't have a clue where they were any more, except the unending buzz of the fans was slightly louder.
"Here we are," Fabian said happily, and showed his card to the lock.
Charlotte looked round as biolum strips covered in protective grilles came on. The room had an industrial feel to it; a gloomy high ceiling, the walls covered in big thermal insulation panels. It had housed some heavy machinery in the past; the mountings were still there, jutting out of the walls, two rows of thick pipes rose out of the floor like stumpy chimneys, capped by metal plates, a spiderweb of empty cable ducts arched around the door. But it was a teenager's den now. A rich teenager. There were flatscreens screwed to the walls, several hardware terminals and display cubes on old tables, piles of cushions, a music deck, a couple of electric guitars, large speakers, clothes scattered round, empty boxes, and ten large tanks full of tropical fish.
"This chamber used to hold the MHD units," Fabian said. "When it was an ordinary passenger ship on the Pacific run the Colonel Maitland burnt hydrogen for power. The solar cell envelope doesn't catch enough energy to power the fans, you see. But when Father had it refitted, we switched to gigaconductor cells. Saves an awful lot of weight."
"So where does the power come from now?" she asked.
Fabian fell back into one of the beanbags, hands behind his head, beaming. "The Gulfstream has extra cells fitted, they charge up from the industrial grid every time it lands, then it transfers the electricity when it gets back."
"So this is where you hang out, is it?" She peered at one of the fish tanks, admiring the vivid rainbow patterns on the guppies, suspecting genetic engineering featured prominently in their heritage.
"Yep."
"Doing what, exactly?"
"I'll show you." Fabian jumped up, limbs jerking erratically, as though he was operated by wires. He tugged his T-shirt off. "This is really the most scorching game on the market. I love this. I'm good at it, too. Really good."