'Guess so,' I said.
'Mind if we come in?'
There were about half a dozen of them, and they were already coming in. They all wore slightly timeworn ochre overalls, flashed with too many company sigils. My hackles rose. I didn't really like the way they were barging in.
'What's up?' I said. 'Where are we?'
'Where do you think?' the man said. He had a face full of stubble, with bad yellow teeth. I was impressed by that. Having bad teeth took a lot of work these days. It was years since I'd seen anyone who had the same dedication to the art.
'I'm really hoping you're not going to tell me we're still stuck in Arkangel System,' I said.
'No, you made it through the gate.'
'And?'
'There was a screw-up. Routing error. You didn't pop out of the right aperture.'
'Oh, Christ.' I took off my bib cap. 'It never rains. Something went wrong with the insertion, right?'
'Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows how these things happen? All we know is you aren't supposed to be here.'
'Right. And where is "here"?'
'Saumlaki Station. Schedar Sector.'
He said it as though he was already losing interest, as if this was a routine he went through several times a day.
He might have been losing interest. I wasn't.
I'd never heard of Saumlaki Station, but I'd certainly heard of Schedar Sector. Schedar was a K supergiant out towards the edge of the Local Bubble. It defined one of the seventy-odd navigational sectors across the whole Bubble.
Did I mention the Bubble already?
You know how the Milky Way Galaxy looks; you've seen it a thousand times, in paintings and computer simulations. A bright central bulge at the galactic core, with lazily curved spiral arms flung out from that hub, each arm composed of hundreds of billions of stars, ranging from the dimmest, slow-burning dwarfs to the hottest supergiants teetering on the edge of supernova extinction.
Now zoom in on one arm of the Milky Way. There's the sun, orange-yellow, about two-thirds out from the centre of the galaxy. Lanes and folds of dust swaddle the sun out to distances of tens of thousands of light-years. Yet the sun itself is sitting right in the middle of a four-hundred-light-year-wide hole in the dust, a bubble in which the density is about a twentieth of its average value.
That's the Local Bubble. It's as if God blew a hole in the dust just for us.
Except, of course, it wasn't God. It was a supernova, about a million years ago.
Look further out, and there are more bubbles, their walls intersecting and merging, forming a vast froth-like structure tens of thousands of light-years across. There are the structures of Loop I and Loop II and the Lindblad Ring. There are even superdense knots where the dust is almost too thick to be seen through at all. Black cauls like the Taurus or Rho-Ophiuchi Dark Clouds, or the Aquila Rift itself.
Lying outside the Local Bubble, the Rift is the furthest point in the galaxy we've ever travelled to. It's not a question of endurance or nerve. There simply isn't a way to get beyond it, at least not within the faster-than-light network of the aperture links. The rabbit-warren of possible routes just doesn't reach any further. Most destinations - including most of those on the Blue Goose's itinerary - didn't even get you beyond the Local Bubble.
For us, it didn't matter. There's still a lot of commerce you can do within a hundred light-years of Earth. But Schedar was right on the periphery of the Bubble, where dust density began to ramp up to normal galactic levels, two hundred and twenty-eight light-years from Mother Earth.
Again: not good.
'I know this is a shock for you,' another voice said. 'But it's not as bad as you think it is.'
I looked at the woman who had just spoken. Medium height, the kind of face they called 'elfin', with slanted, ash-grey eyes and a bob of shoulder-length, chrome-white hair.
The face was achingly familiar.
'It isn't?'
'I wouldn't say so, Thom.' She smiled. 'After all, it's given us the chance to catch up on old times, hasn't it?'
'Greta?' I asked, disbelievingly.
She nodded. 'For my sins.'
'My God. It is you, isn't it?'
'I wasn't sure you'd recognise me. Especially after all this time.'
'You didn't have much trouble recognising me.'
'I didn't have to. The moment you popped out we picked up your recovery transponder. Told us the name of your ship, who owned her, who was flying it, what you were carrying, where you were supposed to be headed. When I heard it was you, I made sure I was part of the reception team. But don't worry. It's not like you've changed all that much.'
'Well, you haven't either,' I said.
It wasn't quite true. But who honestly wants to hear that they look about ten years older than the last time you saw them, even if they still don't look all that bad with it? I thought about how she had looked naked, memories that I'd kept buried for a decade spooling into daylight. It shamed me that they were still so vivid, as if some furtive part of my subconscious had been secretly hoarding them through years of marriage and fidelity.
Greta half-smiled. It was as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.
'You were never a good liar, Thom.'
'Yeah. Guess I need some practice.'
There was an awkward silence. Neither of us seemed to know what to say next. While we hesitated the others floated around us, saying nothing.
'Well,' I said. 'Who'd have guessed we'd end up meeting like this?'
Greta nodded and offered the palms of her hands in a kind of apology.
'I'm just sorry we aren't meeting under better circumstances,' she said. 'But if it's any consolation, what happened wasn't at all your fault. We checked your syntax, and there wasn't a mistake. It's just that now and then the system throws a glitch.'
'Funny how no one likes to talk about that very much,' I said.
'Could have been worse, Thom. I remember what you used to tell me about space travel.'
'Yeah? Which particular pearl of wisdom would that have been?'
'If you're in a position to moan about a situation, you've no right to be moaning.'
'Christ. Did I actually say that?'
'Mm. And I bet you're regretting it now. But look, it really isn't that bad. You're only twenty days off-schedule.' Greta nodded towards the man who had the bad teeth. 'Kolding says you'll only need a day of damage repair before you can move off again, and then another twenty, twenty-five days before you reach your destination, depending on routing patterns. That's less than six weeks. So you lose the bonus on this one. Big deal. You're all in good shape, and your ship only needs a little work. Why don't you just bite the bullet and sign the repair paperwork?'
'I'm not looking forward to another twenty days in the surge tank. There's something else, as well.'
'Which is?'
I was about to tell her about Katerina, how she'd have been expecting me back already.
Instead I said: 'I'm worried about the others. Suzy and Ray. They've got families expecting them. They'll be worried.'
'I understand,' Greta said. 'Suzy and Ray. They're still asleep, aren't they? Still in their surge tanks?'
'Yes,' I said, guardedly.
'Keep them that way until you're on your way.' Greta smiled. 'There's no sense worrying them about their families, either. It's kinder.'
'If you say so.'
'Trust me on this one, Thom. This isn't the first time I've handled this kind of situation. Doubt it'll be the last, either.'
I stayed in a hotel overnight, in another part of Saumlaki. The hotel was an echoing, multilevel prefab structure, sunk deep into bedrock. It must have had a capacity for hundreds of guests, but at the moment only a handful of the rooms seemed to be occupied. I slept fitfully and got up early. In the atrium, I saw a bib-capped worker in rubber gloves removing diseased carp from a small ornamental pond. Watching him pick out the ailing, metallic-orange fish, I had a flash of deja vu. What was it about dismal hotels a
nd dying carp?
Before breakfast - bleakly alert, even though I didn't really feel as if I'd had a good night's sleep - I visited Kolding and got a fresh update on the repair schedule.
'Two, three days,' he said.
'It was a day last night.'
Kolding shrugged. 'You've got a problem with the service, find someone else to fix your ship.'
Then he stuck his little finger into the corner of his mouth and began to dig between his teeth.
'Nice to see someone who really enjoys his work,' I said.
I left Kolding before my mood worsened too much, making my way to a different part of the station.
Greta had suggested we meet for breakfast and catch up on old times. She was there when I arrived, sitting at a table on an 'outdoor' terrace, under a red-and-white-striped canopy, sipping orange juice. Above us was a dome several hundred metres wide, projecting a cloudless holographic sky. It had the hard, enamelled blue of midsummer.
'How's the hotel?' she asked after I'd ordered a coffee from the waiter.
'Not bad. No one seems very keen on conversation, though. Is it me or does that place have all the cheery ambience of a sinking ocean liner?'
'It's just this place,' Greta said. 'Everyone who comes here is pissed off about it. Either they got transferred here and they're pissed off about that, or they ended up here by a routing error and they're pissed off about that instead. Take your pick.'
'No one's happy?'
'Only the ones who know they're getting out of here soon.'
'Would that include you?'
'No,' she said. 'I'm more or less stuck here. But I'm okay about it. I guess I'm the exception that proves the rule.'
The waiters were glass mannequins, the kind that had been fashionable in the core worlds about twenty years ago. One of them placed a croissant in front of me, then poured scalding black coffee into my cup.
'Well, it's good to see you,' I said.
'You too, Thom.' Greta finished her orange juice and then took a corner of my croissant for herself, without asking. 'I heard you got married.'
'Yes.'
'Well? Aren't you going to tell me about her?'
I drank some of my coffee. 'Her name's Katerina.'
'Nice name.'
'She works in the Department of Bioremediation on Kagawa.'
'Kids?' Greta asked.
'Not yet. It wouldn't be easy, the amount of time we both spend away from home.'
'Mm.' She had a mouthful of croissant. 'But one day you might think about it.'
'Nothing's ruled out,' I said. As flattered as I was that she was taking such an interest in me, the surgical precision of her questions left me slightly uncomfortable. There was no thrust and parry; no fishing for information. That kind of directness unnerved. But at least it allowed me to ask the same questions. 'What about you, then?'
'Nothing very exciting. I got married a year or so after I last saw you. A man called Marcel.'
'Marcel,' I said, ruminatively, as if the name had cosmic significance. 'Well, I'm happy for you. I take it he's here, too?'
'No. Our work took us in different directions. We're still married, but . . .' Greta left the sentence hanging.
'It can't be easy,' I said.
'If it was meant to work, we'd have found a way. Anyway, don't feel too sorry for either of us. We've both got our work. I wouldn't say I was any less happy than the last time we met.'
'Well, that's good,' I said.
Greta leaned over and touched my hand. Her fingernails were midnight black with a blue sheen.
'Look. This is really presumptuous of me. It's one thing asking to meet up for breakfast. It would have been rude not to. But how would you like to meet again later? It's really nice to eat here in the evening. They turn down the lights. The view through the dome is really something.'
I looked up into that endless holographic sky.
'I thought it was faked.'
'Oh, it is,' she said. 'But don't let that spoil it for you.'
I settled in front of the camera and started speaking.
'Katerina,' I said. 'Hello. I hope you're all right. By now I hope someone from the company will have been in touch. If they haven't, I'm pretty sure you'll have made your own enquiries. I'm not sure what they told you, but I promise you that we're safe and sound and that we're coming home. I'm calling from somewhere called Saumlaki Station, a repair facility on the edge of Schedar Sector. It's not much to look at: just a warren of tunnels and centrifuges dug into a pitch-black D-type asteroid, about half a light-year from the nearest star. The only reason it's here at all is because there happens to be an aperture next door. That's how we got here in the first place. Somehow or other Blue Goose took a wrong turn in the network, what they call a routing error. The Goose came in last night, local time, and I've been in a hotel since then. I didn't call last night because I was too tired and disorientated after coming out of the tank, and I didn't know how long we were going to be here. Seemed better to wait until morning, when we'd have a better idea of the damage to the ship. It's nothing serious - just a few bits and pieces buckled during the transit - but it means we're going to be here for another couple of days. Kolding - he's the repair chief - says three at the most. By the time we get back on course, however, we'll be about forty days behind schedule.'
I paused, eyeing the incrementing cost indicator. Before I sat down in the booth I always had an eloquent and economical speech cued up in my head, one that conveyed exactly what needed to be said, with the measure and grace of a soliloquy. But my mind always dried up as soon as I opened my mouth, and instead of an actor I ended up sounding like a small-time thief, concocting some fumbling alibi in the presence of quick-witted interrogators.
I smiled awkwardly and continued: 'It kills me to think this message is going to take so long to get to you. But if there's a silver lining it's that I won't be far behind it. By the time you get this, I should be home only a couple of days later. So don't waste money replying to this, because by the time you get it I'll already have left Saumlaki Station. Just stay where you are and I promise I'll be home soon.'
That was it. There was nothing more I needed to say, other than: 'I miss you.' Delivered after a moment's pause, I meant it to sound emphatic. But when I replayed the recording it sounded more like an afterthought.
I could have recorded it again, but I doubted that I would have been any happier. Instead I just committed the existing message for transmission and wondered how long it would have to wait before going on its way. Since it seemed unlikely that there was a vast flow of commerce in and out of Saumlaki, our ship might be the first suitable outbound vessel.
I emerged from the booth. For some reason I felt guilty, as if I had been in some way neglectful. It took me a while before I realised what was playing on my mind. I'd told Katerina about Saumlaki Station. I'd even told her about Kolding and the damage to the Blue Goose. But I hadn't told her about Greta.
It's not working with Suzy.
She's too smart, too well attuned to the physiological correlatives of surge tank immersion. I can give her all the reassurances in the world, but she knows she's been under too long for this to be anything other than a truly epic screw-up. She knows that we aren't just talking weeks or even months of delay here. Every nerve in her body is screaming that message into her skull.
'I had dreams,' she says, when the grogginess fades.
'What kind?'
'Dreams that I kept waking. Dreams that you were pulling me out of the surge tank. You and someone else.'
I do my best to smile. I'm alone, but Greta isn't far away. The hypodermic's in my pocket now.
'I always get bad dreams coming out of the tank,' I say.
'These felt real. Your story kept changing, but you kept telling me we were somewhere . . . that we'd gone a little off course, but that it was nothing to worry about.'
So much for Greta's reassurance that Suzy will remember nothing after our aborted efforts at waking her
. Seems that her short-term memory isn't quite as fallible as we'd like.
'It's funny you should say that,' I tell her, 'because, actually, we are a little off course.'
She's sharper with every breath. Suzy was always the best of us at coming out of the tank.
'Tell me how far, Thom.'
'Farther than I'd like.'
She balls her fists. I can't tell if it's aggression, or some lingering neuromuscular effect of her time in the tank. 'How far? Beyond the Bubble?'