Radu’s seat on the earth shuttle was right next to Orca’s. It would have been easier if they could have changed, but the ship was full. They strapped in without speaking as the craft prepared to undock.
Radu glanced carefully up and down the aisle, noting each passenger. No one else was crew. A few, by their ease in weightlessness, were station personnel; most were tourists or other visitors.
He wished he had something to say to Orca to ease the anger and distrust he had forced between them. She sat straight and tense. He followed her gaze toward the front of the shuttle.
A pilot had just come on board. Radu’s pulse rate increased.
Ramona-Teresa paused in the aisle when she reached his place. Her glance at him was milder than when she had warned Laenea not to take Radu, or anyone else not a pilot, as her lover. She nodded to Orca, and smiled at Radu, as if to say, So, my dear, you like your lovers exotic: but you should have taken my advice about pilots in the first place.
Radu looked away from her, blushing. He did not speak to her, and he was too embarrassed to say anything to Orca.
o0o
Neither Radu nor Orca broke the silence, all the way down. They landed on the port platform late at night. In the disorder of getting off the shuttle, Orca vanished among the other passengers. Though he was glad she would be out of his conflict with the pilots, after her departure Radu felt very much alone. He saw Ramona-Teresa in the crowd, but she paid him no attention. Radu was puzzled. She had not been with the pilots who had confronted him. Could she be unaware of what had happened?
Radu passed his hand over his eyes and rubbed his temples. She knew. He was quite sure that she knew.
He went to the nearest communications terminal and requested the status of Laenea’s ship.
It was still out.
His concern increased. He needed to find someone who knew about pilot training, who knew how long the first flight usually lasted.
Why don’t you catch up to Ramona-Teresa, and ask her? he thought, and laughed quickly.
“Do you wish to receive your message?” the terminal asked him.
“Do I have one?”
Taking his question as an affirmative, the terminal responded, spitting out hard copy for privacy rather than spinning the words in the air or speaking them aloud: I must see you alone as soon as you return. Come to my restaurant. Marc.
Radu touched the wyuna in his pocket. He was surprised that Laenea’s mysterious friend even remembered him.
Radu shoved the message into his pocket beside the wyuna. He wondered what Marc could have to say to him, to sound so urgent. He decided he had better find out.
o0o
Marc’s restaurant was dark. Radu stood outside the closed ornamental gate, unsure what to do.
Marc’s image flickered into existence before him.
“Hello, Radu Dracul.”
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Radu said. “But I just got your message.”
“I seldom sleep,” Marc said. “Come in.”
The gate swung silently open. Radu peered into the dimness, seeing no one; a light came on, but no one was there.
“It’s safe,” Marc said. “I don’t keep a nest of tigers, which is more than I can say for some other of Laenea’s friends.”
The reference to tigers reminded Radu of Kathell Stafford and her threat. He had barely thought of her since he left. Could Marc know of the incident? Uneasily, Radu went inside.
Ferns and vines and tropical plants lined the walls and drooped from the ceiling of the foyer. Radu had not even noticed them the first time he was here. He smiled, remembering: He and Laenea had had other things to notice than the décor.
Like the plants in a ship’s ecosystem, these raised their environment’s oxygen content. Radu recognized several species that were specially designed to be used in transit vessels. He had never seen them outside one before. He stopped in front of a second wrought-iron gate. Marc’s indoor display formed, its colors sparkling through a rainbow.
“Not that way,” he said. “In here.”
A door, completely concealed by the vegetation, slipped open silently to reveal another unlit passage.
“I don’t like to leave this open very long,” Marc said when Radu hesitated.
Radu stepped through the foliage. The door glided shut, narrowing and then obliterating the block of light cast from behind him.
Blind, Radu waited for one of Marc’s communication displays, for any glimmer of light. The echo of a large room replied to the beat of his heart.
His eyes began to adjust. A glowing ember touched the edge of his vision. Then one indistinct shape sprang into focus, and another. He was surrounded by luminescent objects of delicate form.
The lights came up gradually. The luminescence faded, eclipsed by artifacts whose beauty was brought out by color. Glass shelves lined the walls, displaying Marc’s collection of all the pretty things that people brought him.
“Do you like them?”
The voice was not the smooth production of the machine, but clear, direct, and human. Radu turned reluctantly toward it. Marc sat in an alcove at the end of the room. He was not deformed, as rumor made him. He was quite a handsome man, forty-five or fifty, with dark brown hair and eyes, and very pale skin. His face was unlined, gentle, and calm.
“It’s safe,” Marc said again. “I’m safe. I know the rumors about me. You don’t need to be frightened.”
“I’m not.” Radu approached, and, at Marc’s nod, sat on a bench nearby. “It’s only that I didn’t expect to meet you. Laenea told me no one ever did.”
“That’s almost true,” Marc said. “Almost, but not quite.”
Marc wore blue velvet pants, sandals, and a sleeveless silk shirt. He held himself motionless, but the tension in the muscles of his bare arms showed that his lack of animation was deliberate.
He isn’t paralyzed, Radu thought; and then Marc slowly crossed one leg over the other. He moved as if he were afraid of what might happen if he did not stay almost perfectly quiet. Some diseases cause the bones to grow brittle and break with any exertion…
“Thank you for coming in,” Marc said. “I hoped you would answer my message. I was extremely anxious to speak with you, before you took any action about the pilots.”
Radu raised one eyebrow. “Your sources are very efficient.”
“Some people bring me things,” Marc said. “Others give me information.”
Radu remembered the wyuna. He drew it from his pocket. Its hard opalescent ridges caught the light.
“I thought of you when I saw this.”
Marc gazed smiling at Radu’s offering, but he did not reach out.
“You must already have a whole shelf full,” Radu said. Marc, with his connections, had probably been given wyunas when they were still an experiment. Radu closed his hand around the jewel. He seemed always to behave like a naïf, here on earth.
“No!” Marc said quickly. “On the contrary, I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it a shell? A stone?”
Radu placed it on the arm of Marc’s chair. Both Marc’s hands covered panels of switches and buttons; he did not move from touching them, but bent down to look at his gift.
“It’s a wyuna,” Radu said. As he explained about Ngthwnmulun’s new cash crop, he decided he had better tell the whole truth about it. “There’s one other fact, but I don’t think Atna’s people want it widely known.”
“Their secrets are safe here,” Marc said. “As are yours.”
While he explained to Marc about tree warts, Radu considered what the older man had told him in that single offhand phrase.
Marc reached out very slowly, with a visible tremor in his hand, to lift the wyuna between his thumb and forefinger. He barely raised his arm. Radu wondered if, instead of fragile bones, he had some sort of muscle ailment that prevented his moving easily.
“It’s lovely,” Marc said. “Thank you for thinking of me.” Marc explored the wyuna with his gaze for several minutes, turning it over and over in his fingers. Finally he replaced it on the armrest of his chair and covered the control panel with his hand again.
“You’ve disturbed the pilots rather badly,” he said.
Radu hesitated before replying, but as Marc already knew what had occurred, Radu did not see how he could get him into trouble by discussing it with him.
“How did you know what happened? They showed me they didn’t want me to tell anyone — why did they tell you?”
“‘Who knows, with pilots?’”
“I’m tired of hearing that! I’m tired of thinking it — they’re human beings just like you and me. I don’t believe they’re so different.” He forced his voice to a calmer tone. “I don’t think you do, either.”
“No,” Marc said. “You’re right. And you’re right that they’re still very human.” He smiled briefly. “They’re human enough that a few are incurable gossips. But they’re also human enough to be unpredictable when they’re in a panic.”
“I’m not a threat to them.”
“That remains to be seen. There’s no way to tell how the administrators will react to the news. First, they’ll want to study you.”
“Do they have to find out?”
“I’m afraid so. It may take a few days, but even if they don’t hear directly the flight recorder will contain anomalies that the computer will flag.”
“You know a great deal about this,” Radu said.
“Yes… well… I used to be a pilot.”
Radu sat back, astonished. “A pilot! Laenea never said —”
“She doesn’t know,” Marc said sharply. “Very few people know. The old pilots, but not the new ones. I wasn’t even a member of the first working group. I was an experiment. Most of the people who knew me before believe I’m dead.”
“Why? Why have you locked yourself up here? And why did you let me in?”
“Something happened to me in transit,” Marc said. “And something happened to you. I thought I might be of help.”
Near Marc, Radu felt none of the unease he felt around Vasili Nikolaievich or Laenea, and none of the terror he had experienced in the face of the imperturbable circle of pilots who had nearly killed him. Even now that he was aware of Marc’s status, he felt calm in his presence.
“What should I do?” he asked. “I’m no pilot.”
“Not by the usual criteria, no,” Marc said. “But if you’re an indication that some normal folk can withstand transit, the pilots will become curiosities. They have no society but their own. They might continue working, but they’d soon be outnumbered. They give up a great deal to become pilots. But they gain more. They cannot — they will not — go back to being ordinary people.”
“Surely I’m the one who’s a curiosity,” Radu said.
“Perhaps,” Marc said in a noncommittal tone.
“Vasili Nikolaievich said he should kill me,” Radu said. “I didn’t think he would, but I didn’t believe he was trying to make a joke, either.”
Radu expected him to smile, but his expression remained grave.
“Do you intend to let me leave here?” Radu asked.
At that Marc did smile. “Of course I do,” he said. “I’m not a pilot anymore. My loyalties are a bit wider. I confess, though, I am curious about your experience.”
“I don’t think I can tell you much more than you already know. I woke up in transit. I’m alive.”
“There’s more than that. There must be. Did you ever come out of the anesthetic early before? Did you have any indication that you were restless?”
“No. The opposite. The recordings always showed I slept more peacefully than most.”
“Did anything unusual ever happen on your other flights?”
”No.”
“Don’t answer so quickly with such certainty. Did you awaken easily?”
“Yes.”
“You were often first, then.”
“Yes.” He thought back over his rather small number of transit dives. The one time he had been helped from his sleep chamber, it had been by Vasili, the only pilot he had ever flown with. “Always first, so far. But I’ve not been crew that long.”
“You felt that you slept soundly in transit.”
“Yes. I used a high anesthetic level, and I dreamed.”
“Dreamed!”
Radu hesitated. “Laenea was surprised, too, when I told her. Is it all that uncommon?”
“Yes. It’s unique as far as I know.”
“I don’t see how it could make the least bit of difference.”
“There is a difference. Like the difference between real sleep and the crew’s drugged coma. How did you wake up when you were supposed to be drugged?”
“The first time, I thought the gas line was stopped up. I found no obstruction.” He stretched out his arm so the sleeve pulled back from his wrist, revealing the bandage. “The second time, I tore loose the needle. The third time I reacted badly to the drug.” He scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “Maybe there’s nothing strange about what happened to me. Maybe most people can live through transit awake and it was something else that killed the first ones to try it.”
“Do you think so?”
Radu did not answer for a while. Finally he said, “No. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
“Nor do I, and I have reasons for my opinion. What do you dream about?”
“Usually? Or this time?”
“Both. Tell me the difference.”
“Before now, my dreams were always pleasant. About home, and my clan. Before the plague. And on the way to Ngthummulun, I dreamed about being with Laenea.”
“And coming back?”
“I dreamed about her again, but something was wrong; she needed help, she was calling to me —” He shivered. The dreams had been very real. He would not feel comfortable, he would not believe she was safe, until he talked to her. “The nightmares woke me up.”
“Did you ever have nightmares like that before?” Marc asked.
“For a while,” Radu said reluctantly. “Back on Twilight…”
“Under what circumstances?”
“It was during the plague. I’d dream of people, and they’d die. I had nightmares, or hallucinations. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference —”
“Wait,” Marc said. “What did you say?”
“Just now? I said sometimes I was too tired to tell the difference between dreams and hallucinations. I’d have nightmares about being able to help my family and my friends who died.”
“Not exactly,” Marc said. “You said, ‘I’d dream of people, and they’d die.’ ”
Radu hesitated, tempted to say he had misspoken himself. “That’s how it seemed, sometimes,” he said. “That I’d know someone was going to die before they got sick. You see what I mean about hallucinations.”
Marc gave no sign of immediate agreement. “Were there similarities between those dreams and the ones you had in transit?”
“Only superficially. The people back home really were in danger. Laenea’s perfectly safe.”
“No one’s ever perfectly safe in transit,” Marc said. “Laenea’s training flight has lasted an exceptionally long time.”
“You don’t think she might really be in trouble, do you?” Radu asked.
“There’s no way to tell, until she comes back… or doesn’t.”
Radu tried to smile. “She probably just insisted on learning everything there is to learn, all on the first trip.”
“No doubt.” Marc sat very still, watching Radu and blinking slowly. “Now tell me what happened when you were awake.”
“I saw nothing. Vasili Nikolaievich asked me what I thought of transit, and I got angry at him because I thought he was making fun of me. But he wasn’t. He perceived something.”
“Yes…” Marc said. “And you did not?”
“Just a flat gray surface, as if the port had been covered over.” He shrugged. “Oh, once in a while I thought I saw a flash of color, but I think that must have been my imagination.”
“Perhaps.”
“Surely one can’t fly blind in transit — what use could I be? How could I be a threat?”
“Radu,” Marc said kindly, “I think you’re going to have to accept this ability, not deny it. There’s a lot we don’t know about transit yet. You’re going to be a factor in its exploration, however uncomfortable that makes you feel.”
Radu slouched down, feeling unhappy, uneasy, angry.
“Do you have any immediate plans?”
“I don’t see how I can make any,” Radu said. “Last night, on Earthstation, the pilots confronted me. They wanted me to go with them, and I refused. But I can’t crew again without their help. I can’t even go home.”
“I think if you don’t antagonize them, they’ll come to a reasonable decision.”
“What’s a reasonable decision, for a pilot? That they’ll deign not to kill me? Can’t you help?” he asked desperately. “They must respect you and consider your advice.”
Marc gazed over Radu’s head, then around the room. Radu heard his breathing deepen, as if he were working hard to control a strong emotional reaction.
“Not as much as you might think,” he said.
“But you’re one of the first. You made everything possible for them.”
“I’m a failed pilot,” Marc said. “One of the first or not, I returned and had my natural heart put back in my chest. I’m not one of them anymore, nor am I like you.”
Radu waited. He asked no questions. But he waited.
Marc looked at him, his eyes half closed.
“Transit is different for everyone. The people who ask what it’s like think that if they’re lucky enough to get an answer, they’ll understand it. But the truth is that no one, pilot or not, understands it at all. If you got a reply from every pilot you talked to, you’d still not know what transit is like, you’d only be more confused.” Marc uncrossed his legs and sat with his knees together and his feet flat on the floor, his hands curled around the arms of his chair. “The way it affected me… was to send me into a panic.” His voice shook. His eyes were wide open now, but he was not staring at anything in this room or in this universe.
“I was in terror — I hit the emergency switch. You know —”
Radu nodded, reliving a precipitous departure from transit.
“It took me some time to gather my courage enough to try to go home. It took me so long that the choice was between the terror, and starvation. I was too far from any system to try to reach a world where I could die peacefully.” He smiled sadly. “And I do believe I would have chosen exile to transit, if I’d had the choice.
“The return was completely different. I can no more describe it than I could the other. I came back… in a daze of rapture. But I wasn’t a pilot any longer. I wasn’t sufficiently freed from normal space-time. Transit changed me. Not quite enough to kill me, but if I flew awake again, I’d die. I would have accepted that fate, to return. But of course they wouldn’t permit it.”
“When you went out,” Radu said, “you had no assurance that you’d survive.”
“They were still developing the parameters. They thought I fit. But I didn’t. Not quite.”
“But you’re a hero,” Radu said. “Why do you shut yourself away like this?”
Marc sighed. “Don’t think I wouldn’t enjoy being lionized,” he said. “But I’m old history. And then there’s this.” He lifted his trembling hand.
“A tremor? Who would care?”
“It’s more than that. I lost a lot of brain cells during the trip.”
“Oh,” Radu said, and then, inadequately, “I’m sorry.”
“I never did see much use in regenerating a ruined brain into a new one.”
“You seem far from ruined.”
“Close enough to need regeneration, not close enough to have the decision taken from me. When I’m rational I’m not quite ready to lose myself.”
“The damage… is in the cerebral cortex.”
“The damage is all over.” For the first time Marc’s voice held a hint of bitterness. “No worse there than anywhere — except of course that’s the place it really matters.”
Radu nodded. It was one thing to regenerate a lost hand or a severed nerve or a heart damaged by disease, or removed. Even large areas of the brain, the motor and sensory regions, were well worth bringing back. But what point to regenerating the gray matter, to reforming the connections until memories were stretched and fuzzed beyond recall?
“I’d be left at the level of a three-year-old,” Marc said. “With great luck, four. I don’t even remember being four.” He shook his head. “I have some memories, you see, that I want very much to keep. Those moments in transit. A few others. No, my friend, I’m stuck with me as I am or not at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Radu said again.
“Never mind. It’s far too easy to be maudlin about it. It’s your problem that concerns us now. I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you,” Radu said. “Until I got your message, I had nowhere to turn. I tried to call Laenea, but she’s still in transit.”
“Radu —” Marc stopped. He closed his eyes, then glanced down at his hand. It trembled despite his efforts to clench his fingers over the panel of knobs and switches. He sighed, and touched one button.
Radu started violently at the abrupt sliding crystalline noise. He was on his feet, turned around and crouched, before he realized that the sound was simply the closing of glass doors over the front of each display shelf. Abashed, he turned back toward Marc.
“I apologize for startling you,” Marc said. “Radu, you’ll have to leave now. I’ve overtired myself and I won’t be able to answer for what I do, in a few minutes.”
“Then you’ll need help —”
“No. I won’t. I’ll be all right if I don’t have to worry about you. Please go.”
“But —”
“Don’t argue,” Marc said sharply. “Get off the port and stay away from the pilots till I’ve had a chance to talk to them. I’ll do it as soon as I’m able.”
“Marc…”
“Please, go.”
He stood. Moving awkwardly, he took Radu’s arm. Afraid to resist and take the chance of hurting Marc, Radu let himself be guided through the door.
“Marc —”
Marc stepped back abruptly and the hidden door slid shut between them. Radu put his hands to the wall, thrusting his fingers between the clinging vines to try to find his way back inside. He scratched for a crevice but found only smooth metal.
Marc’s image formed in tenuous colors nearby.
“Believe me,” Marc’s electronically modulated voice said. Radu could hear the resonances of the true voice that formed its basis. “Believe me, I’ll be all right. It’s a matter of pride. These spells aren’t pretty. Call me every day until I answer, but don’t leave word where you are.” The image vanished.
“But —” Radu hesitated in the foyer, disgusted with himself for having left Marc alone. He willed the image to reappear, but it remained as hidden as the doorway. Radu knew he must go.
From the alcove, he looked cautiously out at the mall. This late at night, it lay deserted and silent. Radu stepped out into the corridor and headed for the elevator. Marc had made the pilots more comprehensible to him, yet more frightening. They were frightened, too, which made them seem more human, but more unpredictable and therefore more dangerous. Marc’s suggestion that Radu avoid them was, Radu decided, excellent advice.
He turned a corner and came face to face with Orca. Astonished, he stopped. She glared up at him, folding her arms across her chest.
“Do you want the pilots to follow you?” she said belligerently.
“No,” he said. “No, of course not. What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?”
“Gods,” she said. “They shouldn’t let you off the ship. They ought to give colonists a survival manual. They ought to wrap you in structural foam. Radu, you didn’t put a guard on your file. Is everybody on Twilight that respectful of privacy? What were you thinking of?”
“Wait,” he said. “You read my messages?”
“Don’t sound so distressed. I looked to see if you’d protected yourself, and you hadn’t. The pilots wouldn’t have any more trouble finding you than I did.”
“I don’t understand, Orca. Can anyone learn anything about me, whenever they want? How can that be?”
She unfolded her arms and shook her head. “It’s practically reflex to protect your file,” she said. “People’s parents start doing it for them, when they’re kids. But it isn’t automatic, and if you don’t keep track of it, then, yes, people can find out anything they want.”
Radu calmed down. “Thank you for telling me,” he said. “How do I fix it?”
“You don’t have a personal communicator, do you?”
He shook his head. He carried none; they were rare on Twilight and unnecessary on shipboard. He had not bothered to get one when he landed on earth because he had known no one to call.
“Come with me.”
She took him to a terminal and brought up his files. She did not even have to identify herself; without any question of Orca’s right to the information, they revealed Radu’s comings and goings, his credit balance, Marc’s message.
Orca spoke a code, and a patch of light, like the image of a nova, formed before her.
“Stick your hand in there,” she said.
Radu tentatively touched the boundary of the sphere of light. It tingled against his hand like a field of static electricity.
“It’s okay,” Orca said. “It just records your fingerprints.”
Radu thrust his hand into the chaotic light. It read his handprint to the wrist; its border dimpled down where the bandage touched its surface.
Then the display faded to translucence, to transparence, to nothingness.
“Done,” Orca said.
“Is that all?”
“That’s it. The guard isn’t foolproof, but if anybody’s trying to keep track of you, it’ll slow them down.”
“Why did you come back?” Radu asked.
“Not to ask you any more questions, don’t worry,” she said. She started toward the elevator.
He reached to take her hand. “Orca—”
He heard something behind him and spun, afraid of having to face another group of pilots. But a perfectly ordinary person rounded the corner, passed him with a quizzical glance, got on the elevator, and disappeared.
Radu laughed quickly, with relief, then suddenly realized how tightly he was holding Orca’s hand. He let loose his desperate grip.
“I’m sorry — are you —?”
She flexed her long, fine-boned fingers. Radu feared he had crushed them.
“I’m okay.” She put her hand back in his, a gesture of trust and perhaps even of forgiveness.
“I might have broken a bone, or torn your skin —”
Her fingers clamped around his wrist, tight, cutting off the circulation, though she did not appear to be putting much effort into the grip. She squeezed, and Radu winced in pain.
“Orca —” He tried to pull away. Orca appeared perfectly relaxed, but her hand stayed still and so did Radu’s.
“I keep telling you,” she said coldly, “that I’m not delicate. The webs won’t tear and you’d have to work at it, hard, to break my fingers. Are we friends? I thought we were starting to be, but you don’t even trust what I say.”
She let him go.
Radu looked at his wrist. The white impressions of her fingers slowly turned red. He would be bruised in stripes, to match the bruise that spread around the wound on his other arm. “I believe you,” he said. “I won’t doubt you again.”
“You can think me a liar for all I care right now. But when you treat me like a surface child, or some shell that the sand or the water could smash —” She snorted in derision.
“It’s just that you’re so small,” Radu said. “Back home…” He hoped he could say what he meant well enough not to offend her again. “Ever since I left home, I’ve been surrounded by people who seemed fragile to me. I feel as if I could hurt them without meaning to. I felt awkward around Vasili Nikolaievich, and when I helped Atna awaken, I could have been holding a songbird in my hands, his bones seemed so frail.” Radu did not mention Laenea: He had never felt that she was frail, but she was unique in his mind anyway.
“I’m third generation diver,” Orca said. “That’s hardly enough time for us to get decadent.”
Radu rubbed the stinging marks on his arm. “I won’t forget again.”
She touched him, gently this time. “Sorry,” she said. “Come with me for a way.”
She entered the elevator; Radu got in after her. They rose to the surface and left the blockhouse. Orca faced the night’s sea wind and breathed deeply. Beneath the hint of fuel and ozone lay the salt spray of half a world of ocean. Without waiting to see if he came with her, she walked along the edge of the platform for several hundred meters. Radu hesitated, then followed, and they walked together in silence. It was very late, very quiet; the brilliant spotlights fell behind and darkness enfolded and isolated them.
At the edge of the landing platform, Orca put her fingers to her lips and whistled, a piercing, carrying, complex burst of sound. She tilted her head, as if listening, and then she looked out serenely over the gentle swells. Radu saw nothing in the dark waves, and all he could hear was the soft splash of water against the port’s side.
Orca faced him, serious and intense.
“When you want it, I offer my help, and that of my family. Come to Victoria, to the harbor, and ask after us. We aren’t hard to find unless we wish to be.”
“Thank you,” Radu said again.
Orca unfastened her spangled jacket, let it slide from her shoulders, and stripped off her net shirt. She unzipped her pants, let them fall from her narrow hips, and kicked them off along with her red shoes. Her skin gleamed in the moonlight as she paused on the edge of the dock.
“What are you doing?”
“Going home.”
“You’re going to swim? All the way? Won’t you freeze? What about your clothes?” Now that she was actually leaving, Radu found himself gripped by a feeling of loneliness as sudden as it was unexpected, unwanted, and inexplicable.
“Everything I wanted to keep, I left in my bag. My clothes will get to crew quarters, or they won’t. It doesn’t matter.”
“I’ll take them.” He bent and picked them up.
Instead of replying, Orca pointed out at the sea.
The black dorsal fin of a huge animal cut the surface and vanished. A few seconds later the creature breached the water in a spectacular leap. White patches on its side shone like snow. The graceful bulk sliced the water noiselessly coming down, but at the last instant the creature slapped its tail on the water. Droplets spattered Radu’s cheek.
Orca laughed. “She’s playing.”
“What is it?”
“My name-cousin. Orca. The killer whale. She’s come to meet me.” The diver’s voice sounded far away, as if she were already swimming naked and joyous in the frigid mysterious sea. “She’s come to take me home.”
“Good-bye, Orca,” Radu said.
She did not answer, and she did not hug him good-bye. She was no longer crew, but a diver. She drew back her arms, and, as she launched herself off the platform, flung them forward. Her long, flat dive curved down from the high deck, and she entered the water between two swells, without a splash.
Radu watched for her to surface, but saw neither Orca nor her name-cousin again.
He searched for them for several minutes, then finally, turned away from the sea. If he was to follow Marc’s advice, which seemed very sound to him, he had just enough time to catch the early morning ferry to the mainland. He looked forward to getting away from huge metal constructions, to breathing fresh air, to watching the sun rise over a dark line of distant mountains. He wondered how fast Orca and her name-cousin traveled, and whether the ferry might sail past them; would they swim underwater all the way? He did not know if Orca could breathe water, or if she had to surface for air. But perhaps, at dawn, he might stand on the deck and see her swimming with her friend on the bright horizon.
Water slapped gently against the side of the port. The lights of the ferry dock made dim, distant stars in the fog. Radu walked along the edge of the platform. The darkness and the quiet reminded him of home, and of the two years he had spent all alone in the mountains. There he had been alone without feeling loneliness. Loneliness was much more powerful in the midst of many people.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself, he thought angrily. Orca offered you help, and friendship, and you turned her down.
Still, he wished he could dive out into the mist, into the black and soothing sea, and swim through the solitude and silence all the way to the mainland.
He knew better. Whatever permitted Orca to swim long distances in this climate and temperature, Radu lacked. In the frigid water he would last a few minutes, a half hour with great luck. After that he would lapse into hypothermia, and then unconsciousness, and then he would die.
Shadows startled him. He turned, and saw nothing.
Or course you saw nothing, he thought. Nothing’s there. Why are you letting shadows scare you? If you’d behaved like this back home, you would have driven yourself crazy before a season was out.
But he could not help glancing once again toward the imagined movement.
Like a ghost, Vasili Nikolaievich appeared, only his pale face visible in the darkness. Radu gasped involuntarily. The shadows behind the pilot moved: Scattered light glinted off a long lock of blond hair here, a dark face there, a gray wolf-stone, glowing like an animals’ eye. The fog draped itself around them.
“This time you’d better come with us,” Vasili said.
Radu took one step forward. “Leave me alone,” he whispered. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”
“Please don’t argue. Everything’s been decided.”
“Not by me!”
“I told you before, you haven’t anything to say about it.”
Radu panicked. He flung himself around and fled. But there was nowhere he could go, with the pilots spreading out into a semicircle around him, capturing him against the edge of the port. He glanced over his shoulder. They were coming after him, getting closer with each step. He pushed himself harder, panting with exhaustion. Being away from home was making him soft.
Suddenly, in front of him, two more pilots appeared.
Skidding on the damp deck, he stopped. He turned slowly. The blurry, backlit shapes of the pilots were all around him. When he stopped again, he faced the sea.
Radu plunged headfirst off the platform.
He would swim to the ferry ramp, he would climb up it, he would make enough noise to attract the attention of someone besides the pilots —
He hit the water.
The cold knocked the breath out of him. He floundered to the surface, cold salt water in his mouth and nose. He sputtered and coughed and struggled against the return of panic. Above, the pilots argued. The fog hid them and blotted out all but the tones of their voices. They did not shoot at him, if they had weapons, and none followed him into the sea.
The salt stung the cut on his wrist until, in a moment, the cold numbed his hands.
Twilight’s icy mountain lakes held a touch of the world’s warmth, but this ocean promised only inconceivable depths of freezing, lightless water.
Radu paddled laboriously along the edge of the port. If he just kept going he would be all right. Each high swell slapped him in the face with harsh salt spray. His clothes weighted him down. He tried to kick off his boots. He failed. Shivering uncontrollably, he started swimming. He lost his grip on Orca’s clothes. They drifted away. He lunged for them and grabbed them. Somehow it seemed very important to keep hold of them. Orca’s jacket twisted around his arm.
His only hope was to reach the ramp before he passed out. The distance, which had seemed so short when he was running, stretched on interminably. A trick of perspective, he thought, his mind winding around the words, then losing the sense of them. A wave, rebounding from the side of the port, curled over him. He reached for the surface: He thought he knew where it was, but he stretched his arms into water like black ice, and his struggles got him no closer to the air.
A huge dark shape appeared below him. The sight of it pierced through the cold. He remembered what he had read of earth and its predators, and what Orca had said of sharks when she showed him her claws. Terrified, he flailed upward and broke the surface. He tried to catch his breath; he tried to call for help. He tried to swim harder toward the ferry ramp, but the current carried him farther and farther from the port.
The creature rose under him and he felt the turbulence of its motion. He expected slashing pain, teeth through flesh, hot blood gushing through severed arteries and veins. But he felt nothing, except the black shape pushing him. He was beyond pain, beyond panic, beyond fear. Calm settled over him. When the creature attacked, he would not feel it. He would not feel anything anymore. Radu lost consciousness.