The Wreck of the Godspeed
James Patrick Kelly
Day One
What do we know about Adel Ranger Santos?
That he was sixty-five percent oxygen, nineteen percent carbon, ten percent hydrogen, three percent nitrogen, two percent calcium, one percent phosphorus, some potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, magnesium, iodine and iron and just a trace of chromium, cobalt, copper, fluorine, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, tin, vanadium and zinc. That he was of the domain Eukarya, the kingdom of Animalia, the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, the class Mammalia, the order Primates, the family Hominidae, the genus Homo and the species Novo. That, like the overwhelming majority of the sixty trillion people on the worlds of Human Continuum, he was a hybrid cybernetic/biological system composed of intricate subsystems including the circulatory, digestive, endocrine, excretory, informational, integumenary, musculo-skeletal, nervous, psycho-spiritual, reproductive, and respiratory. That he was the third son of Venetta Patience Santos, an Elector of the Host of True Flesh and Halbert Constant Santos, a baker of fine breads. That he was male, left-handed, somewhat introverted, intelligent but no genius, a professed but frustrated heterosexual, an Aries, a virgin, a delibertarian, an agnostic and a swimmer. That he was nineteen Earth standard years old and that until he stumbled, naked, out of the molecular assembler onto the Godspeed he had never left his home world.
The woman caught Adel before he sprawled headlong off the transport stage. "Slow down." She was taller and wider than any of the women he'd known; he felt like a toy in her arms. "You made it, you're here." She straightened him and stepped back to get a look. "Is there a message?"
—a message?—buzzed Adel's plus.
minus buzzed—yes give us clothes—
Normally Adel kept his opposites under control. But he'd just been scanned, transmitted at superluminal speeds some two hundred and fiftyseven light years, and reassembled on a threshold bound for the center of the Milky Way.
"Did they say anything?" The woman's face was tight. "Back home?"
Adel shook his head; he had no idea what she was talking about. He hadn't yet found his voice, but it was understandable if he was a little jumbled. His skin felt a size too small and he shivered in the cool air. This was probably the most important moment of his life and all he could think was that his balls had shrunk to the size of raisins.
"You're not . . . ? All right then." She covered her disappointment so quickly that Adel wondered if he'd seen it at all. "Well, let's get some clothes on you, Rocky."
minus buzzed—who's Rocky?—
"What, didn't your tongue make the jump with the rest of you?" She was wearing green scrubs and green open-toed shoes. A oval medallion on a silver chain hung around her neck; at its center a pix displayed a man eating soup. "Can you understand me?" Her mouth stretched excessively, as if she intended that he read her lips. "I'm afraid I don't speak carrot, or whatever passes for language on your world." She was carrying a blue robe folded over her arm.
"Harvest," said Adel. "I came from Harvest."
"He talks," said the woman. "Now can he walk? And what will it take to get him to say his name?"
"I'm Adel Santos."
"Good." She tossed the robe at him and it slithered around his shoulders and wrapped him in its soft embrace. "If you have a name then I don't have to throw you back." Two slippers unfolded from its pockets and snugged onto his feet. She began to speak with a nervous intensity that made Adel dizzy. "So, Adel, my name is Kamilah, which means 'the perfect one' in Arabic which is a dead language you've probably never heard of and I'm here to give you the official welcome to your pilgrimage aboard the Godspeed and to show you around but we have to get done before dinner which tonight is synthetic roasted garab . . . "
—something is bothering her—buzzed minus—it must be us—
" . . . which is either a bird or a tuber, I forget which exactly but it comes from the cuisine of Ohara which is a world in the Zeta 1 Reticuli system which you've probably never heard of . . . "
—probably just a talker—plus buzzed.
" . . . because I certainly never have." Kamilah wore her hair kinked close against her head; it was the color of rust. She was cute, thought Adel, in a massive sort of way. "Do you understand?"
"Perfectly," he said. "You did say you were perfect."
"So you listen?" A grin flitted across her face. "Are you going to surprise me, Adel Santos?"
"I'll try," he said. "But first I need a bathroom."
There were twenty-eight bathrooms on the Godspeed; twenty of them opened off the lavish bedrooms of Dream Street. A level below was the Ophiuchi Dining Hall, decorated in red alabaster, marble and gilded bronze, which could seat as many as forty around its teak banquet table. In the more modest Chillingsworth Breakfasting Room, reproductions of four refectory tables with oak benches could accommodate more intimate groups. Between the Blue and the Dagger Salons was the Music Room with smokewood lockers filled with the noblest instruments from all the worlds of the Continuum, most of which could play themselves. Below that was a library with the complete range of inputs from brainleads to books made of actual plant material, a ballroom decorated in the Nomura III style, a VR dome with ten animated seats, a gymnasium with a lap pool, a black box theater, a billiard room, a conservatory with five different ecosystems and various stairways, hallways, closets, cubbies, and peculiar dead ends. The MASTA, the molecular array scanner/transmitter/assembler was located in the Well Met Arena, an enormous airlock and staging area that opened onto the surface of the threshold. Here also was the cognizor in which the mind of the Godspeed seethed.
It would be far too convenient to call the Godspeed mad. Better to say that for some time she had been behaving like no other threshold. Most of our pioneering starships were built in hollowed out nickel-iron asteroids—a few were set into fabricated shells. All were propelled by matter-antimatter drives that could reach speeds of just under a hundred thousand kilometers per second, about a third of the speed of light. We began to launch them from the far frontiers of the Continuum a millennium ago to search for terrestrial planets that were either habitable or might profitably be made so. Our thresholds can scan planetary systems of promising stars as far away as twenty light years. When one discovers a suitably terrestrial world, it decelerates and swings into orbit. News of the find is immediately dispatched at superluminal speed to all the worlds of the Continuum; almost immediately materials and technicians appear on the transport stage. Over the course of several years we build a new orbital station containing a second MASTA, establishing a permanent link to the Continuum. Once the link is secured, the threshold continues on its voyage of discovery. In all, the Godspeed had founded thirtyseven colonies in exactly this way.
The life of a threshold follows a pattern: decades of monotonous acceleration, cruising and deceleration punctuated by a few years of intense and glorious activity. Establishing a colony is an ultimate affirmation of human culture and even the cool intelligences generated by the cognizors of our thresholds share in the camaraderie of techs and colonists. Thresholds take justifiable pride in their accomplishments; many have had worlds named for them. However, when the time comes to move on, we expect our thresholds to dampen their enthusiasms and abort their nascent emotions to steel themselves against the tedium of crawling between distant stars at three-tenths the speed of light.
Which all of them did—except for the Godspeed.
As they were climbing up the Tulip Stairway to the Dream Halls, Adel and Kamilah came upon two men making their way down, bound together at the waist by a tether. The tether was about a meter long and two centimeters in diameter; it appeared to be elastic. One side of it pulsed bright red and the other was a darker burgundy. The men were wearing baggy pants and gray jackets with tall, buttoned collars that made them look like birds.
"Adel," said Kamilah, "meet Jonman and Robman."
Jonman looked like he could have been Robman's father, but Adel knew better than to draw any conclusions from that. On some worlds, he knew, physiological camouflage was common practice.
Jonman gazed right through Adel. "I can see that he knows nothing about the problem." He seemed detached, as if he were playing chess in his head.
Kamilah gave him a sharp glance but said nothing. Robman stepped forward and extended his forefinger in greeting. Adel gave it a polite touch.
"This is our rookie, then?" said Robman. "Do you play tikra, Adel?"
—who's a rookie?—buzzed minus.
—we are—
Since Adel didn't know what tikra was, he assumed that he didn't play it. "Not really," he said.
"He's from one of the farm worlds," said Kamilah.
"Oh, a rustic." Robman cocked his head to one side, as if Adel might make sense to him if viewed from a different angle. "Do they have gulpers where you come from? Cows?" Seeing the blank look on Adel's face, he pressed on. "Maybe frell?"
"Blue frell, yes."
—keep talking—plus buzzed—make an impression—
Adel lunged into conversation. "My uncle Durwin makes summer sausage from frell loin. He built his own smoke house."
Robman frowned.
"It's very good." Adel had no idea where he was going with this bit of family history. "The sausages, I mean. He's a butcher."
—and we're an idiot—
"He's from one of the farm worlds," said Jonman, as if he were catching up with their chitchat on a time delay.
"Yes," said Robman. "He makes sausages."
Jonman nodded as if this explained everything about Adel. "Then don't be late for dinner," he advised. "I see there will be garab tonight." With this, the two men continued downstairs.
Adel glanced at Kamilah, hoping she might offer some insight into Robman and Jonman. Her eyes were hooded. "I wouldn't play anything with them if I were you," she murmured. "Jonman has a stochastic implant. Not only does he calculate probabilities, but he cheats."
The top of the Tulip Stairway ended at the midpoint of Dream Street. "Does everything have a name here?" asked Adel.
"Pretty much," said Kamilah. "It tells you something about how bored the early crews must have been. We're going right." The ceiling of Dream Street glowed with a warm light that washed Kamilah's face with pink. She said the names of bedroom suites as they passed the closed doors. "This is Fluxus. The Doghouse. We have room for twenty pilgrims, twice that if we want to double up."
The carpet was a sapphire plush that clutched at Adel's sandals as he shuffled down the hall.
"Chrome over there. That's where Upwood lived. He's gone now. You don't know anything about him, do you?" Her voice was suddenly tight. "Upwood Marcene?"
"No, should I? Is he famous?"
"Not famous, no." The medallion around her neck showed a frozen lake. "He jumped home last week, which leaves us with only seven, now that you're here." She cleared her throat and the odd moment of tension passed. "This is Corazon. Forty Pushups. We haven't found a terrestrial in ages, so Speedy isn't as popular as she used to be."
"You call the threshold Speedy?"
"You'll see." Kamilah sighed. "And this is Cella. We might as well see if Sister is receiving." She pressed her hand to the door and said, "Kamilah here." She waited.
"What do you want, Kamilah?" said the door, a solid blue slab that featured neither latch nor knob.
"I have the new arrival here."
"It's inconvenient." The door sighed. "But I'm coming." It vanished and before them stood a tiny creature, barely up to Adel's waist. She was wearing a hat that looked like a birds nest made of black ribbon with a smoky veil that covered her eyes. Her mouth was thin and severe. All he could see of her almond skin was the dimpled chin and her long elegant neck; the billowing sleeves of her loose black dress swallowed her hands.
"Adel Santos, this is Lihong Rain. She prefers to be called Sister." Sister might have been a child or she might have been a grandmother. Adel couldn't tell.
"Safe passage, Adel." She made no other welcoming gesture.
Adel hesitated, wondering if he should try to initiate contact. But what kind? Offer to touch fingers? Shake hands? Maybe he should catch her up in his arms and dance a two-step.
"Same to you, Sister," he said and bowed.
"I was praying just now." He could feel her gaze even though he couldn't see it. "Are you religious, Brother Adel?" The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
"I'd prefer to be just Adel, if you don't mind," he said. "And no, I'm not particularly religious, I'm afraid."
She sagged, as if he had just piled more weight on her frail shoulders. "Then I will pray for you. If you will excuse me." She stepped back into her room and the blue door reformed.
plus buzzed—we were rude to her—
—we told the truth—
"Don't worry," said Kamilah. "You can't offend her. Or rather, you can't not offend her, since just about everything we do seems to offend her. Which is why she spends almost all her time in her room. She claims she's praying, although Speedy only knows for sure. So I'm in Delhi here, and next door you're in The Ranch."
—Kamilah's next door?—buzzed minus.
—we hardly know her don't even think it—
—too late—
They stopped in front of the door to his room, which was identical to Sister's, except it was green. "Press your right hand to it anywhere, say your name and it will ID you." After Adel followed these instructions, the door considered for a moment and then vanished with a hiss.
Adel guessed that the room was supposed to remind him of home. It didn't exactly, because he'd lived with his parents in a high rise in Great Randall, only two kilometers from Harvest's first MASTA. But it was like houses he had visited out in the countryside. Uncle Durwin's, for example. Or the Pariseaus'. The floor appeared to be of some blondish tongue-and-grooved wood. Two of the walls were set to show a golden tallgrass prairie with a herd of chocolate-colored beasts grazing in the distance. Opposite a rolltop desk were three wooden chairs with velvet upholstered seats gathered around a low oval table. A real plant with leaves like green hearts guarded the twin doorways that opened into the bedroom and the bathroom.
Adel's bed was king-sized with a half moon head and footboards tied to posts that looked like tree trunks with the bark stripped off. It had a salmoncolored bedspread with twining rope pattern. However, we should point out that Adel did not notice anything at all about his bed until much later.
—oh no—
"Hello," said Adel.
—oh yes—
"Hello yourself, lovely boy." The woman was propped on a nest of pillows. She was wearing a smile and shift spun from fog. It wisped across her slim, almost boyish, body concealing very little. Her eyes were wide and the color of honey. Her hair was spiked in silver.
Kamilah spoke from behind him. "Speedy, he just stepped off the damn stage ten minutes ago. He's not thinking of f*cking."
"He's a nineteen year old male, which means he can't think of anything but f*cking." She had a wet, whispery voice, like waves washing against pebbles. "Maybe he doesn't like girls. I like being female, but I certainly don't have to be." Her torso flowed beneath the fog and her legs thickened.
"Actually, I do," said Adel. "Like girls, I mean."
"Then forget Speedy." Kamilah crossed the room to the bed and stuck her hand through the shape on the bed. It was all fog, and Kamilah's hand parted it. "This is just a fetch that Speedy projects when she feels like bothering us in person."
"I have to keep my friends company," said the Godspeed.
"You can keep him company later." Kamilah swiped both hands through the fetch and she disappeared. "Right now he's going to put some clothes on and then we're going to find Meri and Jarek," she said.
"Wait," said Adel. "What did you do to her? Where did she go?"
"She's still here," Kamilah said. "She's always everywhere, Adel. You'll get used to it."
"But what did she want?"
The wall to his right shimmered and became a mirror image of the bedroom. The Godspeed was back in her nest on his bed. "To give you a preview of coming attractions, lovely boy."
Kamilah grasped Adel by the shoulders, turned him away from the wall and aimed him at the closet. "Get changed," she said. "I'll be in the sitting room."
Hanging in the closet were three identical peach-colored uniforms with blue piping at the seams. The tight pantaloons had straps that would pass under the instep of his feet. The dress blue blouse had the all-too-familiar pulsing heart patch over the left breast. The jacket had a double row of enormous silver zippers and bore two merit pins which proclaimed Adel a true believer of the Host of True Flesh.
Except that he wasn't.
Adel had long since given up on his mother's little religion but had never found a way to tell her. Seeing his uniforms filled him with guilt and dread. He'd come two hundred and fifty-seven light years and he had still not escaped her. He'd expected she would pack the specs for True Flesh uniforms in his luggage transmission, but he'd thought she'd send him at least some civilian clothes as well.
—we have to lose the clown suit—
"So how long are you here for?" called Kamilah from the next room.
"A year," replied Adel. "With a second year at my option." Then he whispered, "Speedy, can you hear me?"
"Always. Never doubt it." Her voice came from the tall blue frel-leather boots that were part of his uniform. "Are we going to have secrets from Kamilah? I love secrets."
"I need something to wear," he whispered. "Anything but this."
"A year with an option?" Kamilah called. "Gods, Adel! Who did you murder?"
"Are we talking practical?" said the Godspeed. "Manly? Artistic? Rebellious?"
He stooped and spoke directly into left boot. "Something basic," he said. "Scrubs like Kamilah's will be fine for now."
Two blobs extruded from the closet wall and formed into drab pants and a shirt.
"Adel?" called Kamilah. "Are you all right?"
"I didn't murder anyone." He stripped off the robe and pulled briefs from a drawer. At least the saniwear wasn't official True Flesh. "I wrote an essay."
Softwalks bloomed from the floor. "The hair on your legs, lovely boy, is like the wire that sings in my walls." The Godspeed's voice was a purr.
The closet seemed very small then. As soon as he'd shimmied into his pants, Adel grabbed the shirt and the softwalks and escaped. He didn't bother with socks.
"So how did you get here, Kamilah?" He paused in the bedroom to pull on the shirt before entering the sitting room.
"I was sent here as a condition of my parole."
"Really?" Adel sat on one of the chairs and snapped on his softwalks. "Who did you murder?"
"I was convicted of improper appropriation," she said. "I misused a symbol set that was alien to my cultural background."
—say again?—buzzed minus.
Adel nodded and smiled. "I have no idea what that means."
"That's all right." Her medallion showed a fist. "It's a long story for another time."
We pause here to reflect on the variety of religious beliefs in the Human Continuum. In ancient times, atheists believed that humanity's expansion into space would extinguish its historic susceptibility to superstition. And for a time, as we rode primitive torches to our cramped habitats and attempted to terraform the mostly-inhospitable worlds of our home system, this expectation seemed reasonable. But then the discovery of quantum scanning and the perfection of molecular assembly led to the building of the first MASTA systems and everything changed.
Quantum scanning is, after all, destructive. Depending on exactly what has been placed on the stage, that which is scanned is reduced to mere probabilistic wisps, an exhausted scent or perhaps just soot to be wiped off the sensors. In order to jump from one MASTA to another, we must be prepared to die. Of course, we're only dead for a few seconds, which is the time it takes for the assembler to reconstitute us from a scan. Nevertheless, the widespread acceptance of MASTA transportation means that all of us who had come to thresholds have died and been reborn.
The experience of transitory death has led homo novo to a renewed engagement with the spiritual. But if the atheists were disappointed in their predictions of the demise of religion, the creeds of antiquity were decimated by the new realities of superluminal culture. Ten thousand new religions have risen up on the many worlds of the Continuum to comfort and sustain us in our various needs. We worship stars, sex, the vacuum of space, water, the cosmic microwave background, the Uncertainty Principle, music, old trees, cats, the weather, dead bodies, certain pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom, food, stimulants, depressants, and Levia Calla. We call the deity by many names: Genius, the Bitch, Kindly One, the Trickster, the Alien, the Thumb, Sagittarius A*, the Silence, Surprise, and the Eternal Center. What is striking about this exuberant diversity, when we consider how much blood has been shed in the name of gods, is our universal tolerance of one another. But that's because all of us who acknowledge the divine are co-religionists in one crucial regard: we affirm that the true path to spirituality must necessarily pass across the stages of a MASTA.
Which is another reason why we build thresholds and launch them to spread the Continuum. Which is why so many of our religions count it as an essential pilgrimage to travel with a threshold on some fraction of its long journey. Which is why the Host of True Flesh on the planet Harvest sponsored an essay contest opened to any communicant who had not yet died to go superluminal, the first prize being an all-expense paid pilgrimage to the Godspeed, the oldest, most distant, and therefore holiest of all the thresholds. Which is why Venetta Patience Santos had browbeaten her son Adel to enter the contest.
Adel's reasons for writing his essay had been his own. He had no great faith in the Host and no burning zeal to make a pilgrimage. However he chafed under the rules his parents still imposed on him, and he'd just broken up with his girlfriend Gavrila over the issue of pre-marital intercourse—he being in favor, she taking a decidedly contrary position—and he'd heard steamy rumors of what passed for acceptable sexual behavior on a threshold at the farthest edge of civilization. Essay contestants were charged to express the meaning of the Host of True Flesh in five hundred words or less. Adel brought his in at four hundred and nine.
Our Place By Adel Ranger Santos
We live in a place. This seems obvious, maybe, but think about it. Originally our place was a little valley on the African continent on a planet called Earth. Who we are today was shaped in large part by the way that place was, so long ago. Later humans moved all around that planet and found new places to live. Some were hot, some freezing. We lived at the top of mountains and on endless prairies. We sailed to islands. We walked across deserts and glaciers. But what mattered was that the places that we moved to did not change us. We changed the places. We wore clothes and started fires and built houses. We made every place we went to our place.
Later we left Earth, our home planet, just like we left that valley in Africa. We tried to make places for ourselves in cold space, in habitats, and on asteroids. It was hard. Mars broke our hearts. Venus killed millions. Some people said that the time had come to change ourselves completely so that we could live in these difficult places. People had already begun to meddle with their bodies. It was a time of great danger.
This was when Genius, the goddess of True Flesh awoke for the first time. Nobody knew it then, but looking back we can see that it must have been her. Genius knew that the only way we could stay true to our flesh was to find better places to make our own. Genius visited Levia Calla and taught her to collapse the wave-particle duality so that we could look deep into ourselves and see who we are. Soon we were on our way to the stars. Then Genius told the people to rise up against anyone who wanted to tamper with their bodies. She made the people realize that we were not meant to become machines. That we should be grateful to be alive for the normal a hundred and twenty years and not try to live longer.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we were not alone in space. Maybe if there were really aliens out there somewhere, we would never have had Genius to help us, since there would be no one true flesh. We would probably have all different gods. Maybe we would have changed ourselves, maybe into robots or to look like aliens. This is a scary thought. If it were true, we'd be in another universe. But we're not.
This universe is our place.
What immediately stood out in this essay is how Adel attributed Levia Calla's historic breakthrough to the intervention of Genius. Nobody had ever thought to suggest this before, since Professor Calla had been one of those atheists who had been convinced that religion would wither away over the course of the twenty-first century. The judges were impressed that Adel had so cleverly asserted what could never be disproved. Even more striking was the dangerous speculation that concluded Adel's essay. Ever since Fermi first expressed his paradox, we have struggled with the apparent absence of other civilizations in the universe. Many of the terrestrial worlds we have discovered have complex ecologies, but on none has intelligence evolved. Even now, there are those who desperately recalculate the factors in the Drake Equation in the hopes of arriving at a solution that is greater than one. When Adel made the point that no religion could survive first contact, and then trumped it with the irrefutable fact that we are alone, he won his place on the Godspeed.
Adel and Kamilah came upon two more pilgrims in the library. A man and a woman cuddled on a lime green chenille couch in front of a wall that displayed images of six planets, lined up in a row. The library was crowded with glassed in shelves filled with old-fashioned paper books, and racks with various I/O devices, spex, digitex, whisperers and brainleads. Next to a row of workstations, a long table held an array of artifacts that Adel did not immediately recognize: small sculptures, medals and coins, jewelry and carved wood. Two paintings hung above it, one an image of an artist's studio in which a man in a black hat painted a woman in a blue dress, the other a still life with fruit and some small, dead animals.
"Meri," said Kamilah, "Jarek, this is Adel."
The two pilgrims came to the edge of the couch, their faces alight with anticipation. Out of the corner of his eye, Adel thought he saw Kamilah shake her head. The brightness dimmed and they receded as if nothing had happened.
—we're a disappointment to everyone—buzzed minus
plus buzzed—they just don't know us yet—
Meri looked to be not much older than Adel. She was wearing what might have been long saniwear, only it glowed, registering a thermal map of her body in red, yellow, green and blue. "Adel." She gave him a wistful smile and extended a finger for him to touch.
Jerek held up a hand to indicate that he was otherwise occupied. He was wearing a sleeveless gray shirt, baggy shorts and blacked out spex on which Adel could see a data scrawl flicker.
"You'll usually find these two together," said Kamilah. "And often in bed."
"At least we're not joined at the hip like the Manmans," said Meri. "Have you met them yet?"
Adel frowned. "You mean Robman?"
"And Spaceman." Meri had a third eye tattooed in the middle of her forehead. At least, Adel hoped it was a tattoo.
—sexy—buzzed minus
plus buzzed—weird—
—weird is sexy—
"Oh, Jonman's not so bad." Jarek pulled his spex off.
"If you like snobs." Meri reminded him a little of Gavrila, except for the extra eye. "And cheats."
Jarek replaced the spex on the rack and then clapped Adel on the back. "Welcome to the zoo, brother." He was a head shorter than Adel and had the compact musculature of someone who was born on a high G planet. "So you're in shape," he said. "Do you lift?"
"Some. Not much. I'm a swimmer." Adel had been the Great Randall city champion in the 100 and 200 meter.
"What's your event?"
"Middle distance freestyle."
—friend?—
"We have a lap pool in the gym," said Jarek.
—maybe—minus buzzed
"Saw it." Adel nodded approvingly. "And you? I can tell you work out."
"I wrestle," said Jarek. "Or I did back on Kindred. But I'm a gym rat. I need exercise to clear my mind. So what do you think of old Speedy so far?"
"It's great." For the first time since he had stepped onto the scanning stage in Great Randall, the reality of where he was struck him. "I'm really excited to be here." And as he said it, he realized that it was true.
"That'll wear off," said Kamilah. "Now if you two sports are done comparing large muscle groups, can we move along?"
"What's the rush, Kamilah?" Meri shifted into a corner of the couch. "Planning on keeping this one for yourself?" She patted the seat, indicating that Adel should take Jarek's place. "Come here, let me get an eye on you."
Adel glanced at Jarek, who winked.
"Has Kamilah been filling you in on all the gossip?"
Adel crammed himself against the side cushion of the couch opposite Meri. "Not really."
"That's because no one tells her the good stuff."
Kamilah yawned. "Maybe because I'm not interested."
Adel couldn't look at Meri's face for long without staring at her tattoo, but if he looked away from her face then his gaze drifted to her hot spots. Finally he decided to focus on her hands.
"I don't work out," said Meri, "in case you're wondering."
"Is this the survey that wrapped yesterday?" said Kamilah, turning away from them to look at the planets displayed on the wall. "I heard it was shit."
Meri had long and slender fingers but her fingernails were bitten ragged, especially the thumbs. Her skin was very pale. He guessed that she must have spent a lot of time indoors, wherever she came from.
"System ONR 147-563." Jarek joined her, partially blocking Adel's view of the wall. "Nine point eight nine light years away and a whole lot of nothing. The star has luminosity almost three times that of Sol. Six planets: four hot airless rocks, a jovian and a subjovian."
"I'm still wondering about ONR 134-843," said Kamilah, and the wall filled with a new solar system, most of which Adel couldn't see. "Those five Martian-type planets."
"So?" said Meri. "The star was a K1 orange-red dwarf. Which means those Martians are pretty damn cold. The day max is only 17C on the warmest and at night it drops to—210C. And their atmospheres are way too thin, not one over a hundred millibars. That's practically space."
"But there are five of them." Kamilah held up her right hand, fingers splayed. "Count them, five."
"Five Martians aren't worth one terrestrial," said Jarek.
Kamilah grunted. "Have we seen any terrestrials?"
"Space is huge and we're slow." Jarek bumped against her like a friendly dog. "Besides, what do you care? One of these days you'll bust off this rock, get the hero's parade on Jaxon and spend the rest of your life annoying the other eyejacks and getting your face on the news."
"Sure." Kamilah slouched uncomfortably. "One of these days."
—eyejack?—buzzed minus.
Adel was wondering the same thing. "What's an eyejack?"
"An eyejack," said Meri confidentially, "is someone who shocks other people."
"Shocks for pay," corrected Kamilah, her back still to them.
"Shock?" Adel frowned. "As in voltage shock or scandalize shock?"
"Well, electricity could be involved." Kamilah turned from the wall. Her medallion showed a cat sitting in a sunny window. "But mostly what I do," she continued, "is make people squirm when they get too settled for their own good."
—trouble—buzzed plus.
—love it—minus buzzed.
"And you do this how?"
"Movement." She made a flourish with her left hand that started as a slap but ended as a caress that did not quite touch Jarek's face. Jarek did not flinch. "Imagery. I work in visuals mostly but I sometimes use wordplay. Or sound— laughter, explosions, loud music. Whatever it takes to make you look."
"And people pay you for this?"
"Some do, some sue." Kamilah rattled it off like a catchphrase.
"It's an acquired taste," Meri said. "I know I'm still working on it."
"You liked it the time she made Jonman snort juice out of his nose," said Jarek. "Especially after he predicted she would do it to him."
The wall behind them turned announcement blue. "We have come within survey range of a new binary system. I'm naming the M5 star ONR 126-850 and the M2 star ONR 154-436." The screen showed data sheets on the discoveries: Location, Luminosity, Metallicity, Mass, Age, Temperature, Habitable Ecosphere Radius.
"Who cares about red dwarfs?" said Kamilah.
"About sixty percent of the stars in this sector are red dwarfs," said Meri.
"My point exactly." Said Kamilah, "You're not going to find many terrestrials orbiting an M star. We should be looking somewhere else."
"Why is that?" said Adel.
"M class are small cool stars," said Jarek. "In order to get enough insolation to be even remotely habitable, a planet has to be really close to the sun, so close that they get locked into synchronous rotation because of the intense tidal torque. Which means that one side is always dark and the other is always light. The atmosphere would freeze off the dark side."
"And these stars are known for the frequency and intensity of their flares," said Meri, "which would pretty much cook any life on a planet that close."
"Meri and Jarek are our resident science twizes," said Kamilah. "They can tell you more than you want to know about anything."
"So do we actually get to help decide where to go next?" said Adel.
"Actually, we don't." Jarek shook his head sadly.
"We just argue about it." Kamilah crossed the library to the bathroom and paused at the doorway. "It passes the time. Don't get any ideas about the boy, Meri. I'll be right back." The door vanished as she stepped through and reformed immediately.
"When I first started thinking seriously about making the pilgrimage to the Godspeed," said Jarek, "I had this foolish idea that I might have some influence on the search, maybe even be responsible for a course change. I knew I wouldn't be aboard long enough to make a planetfall, but I thought maybe I could help. But I've studied Speedy's search plan and it's perfect, considering that we can't go any faster than a third of C."
"Besides, we're not going anywhere, Jerek and you and me," said Meri. "Except back to where we came from. By the time Speedy finds the next terrestrial, we could be grandparents."
"Or dead," said Kamilah as she came out of the bathroom. "Shall we tell young Adel here how long it's been since Speedy discovered a terrestrial planet?"
"Young Adel?" said Meri. "Just how old are you?"
"Nineteen standard," Adel muttered.
—twenty-six back home—buzzed plus.
"But that's twenty-six on Harvest."
"One hundred and fifty-eight standard," said the wall. "This is your captain speaking."
"Oh gods." Kamilah rested her forehead in her hand.
The image the Godspeed projected was more uniform than woman; she stood against the dazzle of a star field. Her coat was golden broadcloth lined in red; it hung to her knees. The sleeves were turned back to show the lining. Double rows of brass buttons ran from neck to hem. These were unbuttoned below the waist, revealing red breeches and golden hose. The white sash over her left shoulder was decorated with patches representing all the terrestrial planets she had discovered. Adel counted more than thirty before he lost track.
"I departed from the MASTA on Nuevo Sue?o," said the Godspeed, "one hundred and fifty-eight years ago, Adel, and I've been looking for my next discovery ever since."
"Longer than any other threshold," said Kamilah.
"Longer than any other threshold," the Godspeed said amiably. "Which pains me deeply, I must say. Why do you bring this unfortunate statistic up, perfect one? Is there some conclusion you care to draw?"
She glared at the wall. "Only that we have wasted a century and a half in this desolate corner of the galaxy."
"We, Kamilah?" The Godspeed gave her an amused smile. "How long have you been with me?"
"Not quite a year." She folded her arms.
"Ah, the impatience of flesh." The Godspeed turned to the stars behind her. "You have traveled not quite a third of a light year since your arrival. Consider that I've traveled 50.12 light years since my departure from Nuevo Sue?o. Now see what that looks like to me." She thrust her hands above her head and suddenly the points of light on the wall streamed into ribbons and the center of the screen jerked up-right-left-down-left with each course correction and then the ribbons became stars again. She faced the library again, her face glowing. "You have just come 15.33 parsecs in ten seconds. If I follow my instructions to reach my journey's end at the center of our galaxy I will have traveled 8.5 kiloparsecs."
—if?—buzzed minus.
"Believe me, Kamilah, I can imagine your experience of spacetime more easily than you can imagine mine." She tugged her sash into place and then pointed at Kamilah. "You're going to mope now."
Kamilah shook her head. Her medallion had gone completely black.
"A hundred and thirty-three people have jumped to me since Nuevo Sue?o. How many times do you think I've had this conversation, Kamilah?"
Kamilah bit her lip.
"Ah, if only these walls could talk." The Godspeed's laugh sounded like someone dropping silver spoons. "The things they have seen."
—is she all right?—buzzed plus.
"Here's something I'll bet you didn't know," said the Godspeed. "A fun fact. Now that Adel has replaced Upwood among our little company, everyone on board is under thirty."
The four of them digested this information in astonished silence.
"Wait a minute," said Meri. "What about Jonman?"
"He would like you to believe he's older but he's the same age as Kamilah." She reached into the pocket of her greatcoat and pulled out a scrap of digitex. A new window opened on the wall; it contained the birth certificate of Jon Haught Shillaber. "Twenty-eight standard."
"All of us?" said Jarek. "That's an pretty amazing coincidence."
"A coincidence?" She waved the birth certificate away. "You don't know how hard I schemed to arrange it." She chuckled. "I was practically diabolical."
"Speedy," said Meri carefully, "you're starting to worry us."
"Worry?"
"Worry," said Jarek.
"Why, because I make jokes? Because I have a flare for the dramatic?" She bowed low and gave them an elaborate hand flourish. "I am but mad northnorthwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."
minus buzzed—time to be afraid—
"So," said the Godspeed, "we seem to be having a morale problem. I know my feelings have been hurt. I think we need to come together, work on some common project. Build ourselves back into a team." She directed her gaze at Adel. "What do you say?"
"Sure."
"Then I suggest that we put on a play."
Meri moaned.
"Yes, that will do nicely." The Godspeed clapped her hands, clearly pleased at the prospect. "We'll need to a pick a script. Adel, I understand you've had some acting experience so I'm going to appoint you and Lihong to serve on the selection committee with me. I think poor Sister needs to get out and about more."
"Don't let Lihong pick," said Meri glumly. "How many plays are there about praying?"
"Come now, Meri," said the Godspeed. "Give her a chance. I think you'll be surprised."
Day Five
There are two kinds of pilgrimage, as commonly defined. One is a journey to a specific, usually sacred place; it takes place and then ends. The other is less about a destination and more about a spiritual quest. When we decide to jump to a threshold, we most often begin our pilgrimages intending to get to the Godspeed or the Big D or the Bisous Bisous, stay for some length of time and then return to our ordinary lives. However, as time passes on board we inevitably come to realize—sometimes to our chagrin—that we have been infected with an irrepressible yearning to seek out the numinous, wherever and however it might be found.
Materialists don't have much use for the notion of a soul. They prefer to locate individuality in the mind, which emerges from the brain but cannot exist separately from it. They maintain that information must be communicated to the brain through the senses, and only through the senses. But materialists have yet to offer a rigorous explanation of what happens during those few seconds of a jump when the original has ceased to exist and the scan from it has yet to be reassembled. Because during the brief interval when there are neither senses nor brain nor mind, we all seem to receive some subtle clue about our place in the universe.
This is why there are so few materialists.
Adel had been having dreams. They were not bad dreams, merely disturbing. In one, he was lost in a forest where people grew instead of trees. He stumbled past shrubby little kids he'd gone to school with and great towering grownups like his parents and Uncle Durwin and President Adriana. He knew he had to keep walking because if he stopped he would grow roots and raise his arms up to the sun like all the other tree people, but he was tired, so very tired.
In another, he was standing backstage watching a play he'd never heard of before and Sister Lihong tapped him on the shoulder and told him that Gavrila had called in sick and that he would have to take her part and then she pushed him out of the wings and he was onstage in front of a sellout audience, every one of which was Speedy, and he stumbled across the stage to the bed where Jarek waited for him, naked Jarek, and then Adel realized that he was naked too, and he climbed under the covers because he was cold and embarrassed, and Jarek kept staring at him because he, Adel, was supposed to say his line but he didn't know the next line or any line and so he did the one thing he could think to do, which was to kiss Jarek, on the mouth, and then his tongue brushed the ridges of Jarek's teeth and all the Speedys in the audience gave him a standing ovation . . .
. . . which woke him up.
Adel blinked. He lay in bed between Meri and Jarek; both were still asleep. They were under a yellow sheet that had pink kites and blue clouds on it. Jarek's arm had dropped loosely across Adel's waist. In the dim light he could see that Meri's lips were parted and for a while he listened to the seashore whisper of her breathing. He remembered that something had changed last night between the three of them.
Something, but what?
Obviously his two lovers weren't losing any sleep over it. Speedy had begun to bring the lights up in Meri's room so it had to be close to morning chime. Adel lifted his head but couldn't see the clock without disturbing his bedmates, so he tried to guess the time. If the ceiling was set to gain twenty lumens a minute and Speedy started at 0600, then it was . . . he couldn't do the math. After six in the morning, anyway.
The something was Jarek—yes. Adel realized that he'd enjoyed having sex with Jarek just a bit more than with Meri. Not that he hadn't enjoyed her too. There had been plenty of enjoying going on, that was for sure. A thrilling night all around. But Adel could be rougher with Jarek than he was with Meri. He didn't have to hold anything back. Sex with Jarek was a little like wrestling, only with orgasms.
Adel had been extremely doubtful about sleeping with both Meri and Jarek, until Meri had made it plain that was the only way he was ever going to get into her bed. The normal buzz of his opposites had risen to a scream; their deliberations had gotten so shrill that he'd been forced to mute their input. Not that he didn't know what they were thinking, of course; they were him.
Jarek had been the perfect gentleman at first; they had taken turns pleasuring Meri until the day before yesterday when she had guided Adel's hand to Jarek's erect cock. An awkward moment, but then Adel still felt like he was all thumbs and elbows when it came to sex anyway. Jarek talked continually while he made love, so Adel was never in doubt as to what Jarek wanted him to do. And because he trusted Jarek, Adel began to talk too. And then to moan, whimper, screech, and laugh out loud.
Adel felt extraordinarily adult, f*cking both a man and a woman. He tried the word out in the gloom, mouthing it silently. I f*ck, you f*ck, he, she, or it f*cks, we f*ck, you all f*ck, they f*ck. The only thing that confused him about losing his virginity was not that his sexual identity was now slightly blurry; it was his raging appetite. Now that he knew what he had been missing, he wanted to have sex with everyone here on the Godspeed and then go back to Harvest and f*ck his way through Great Randall Science and Agricultural College and up and down Crown Edge. Well, that wasn't quite true. He didn't particularly want to see the Manmans naked and the thought of sleeping with his parents made him queasy and now that he was an experienced lover, he couldn't see himself on top, underneath or sideways with his ex, Gavrila. But still. He'd been horny back on Harvest but now he felt like he might spin out of control. Was it perverted to want so much sex?
Adel was wondering what color Sister Lihong Rain's hair was and how it would look spread across his pillow when Kamilah spoke through the closed door.
"Send Adel out," she said, "but put some clothes on him first."
Adel's head jerked up. "How does she know I'm here?"
"Time is it?" said Meri.
"Don't know." Jarek moaned and gave him a knee in the small of the back. "But it's for you, brother, so you'd better get it."
He clambered over Meri and tumbled out of bed onto her loafers. Their clothes were strewn around the room. Adel pulled on his saniwear, the taut silver warm-ups that Meri had created for him and his black softwalks. The black floss cape had been his own idea—a signature, like Kamilah's medallion or Sister's veil. The cape was modest, only the size of a face towel, and was attached to his shoulders by the two merit pins he'd recycled from his Host uniforms.
He paused in front of a wall, waved it to mirror mode, combed fingers through his hair and then stepped through the door. Kamilah leaned against the wall with her medallion in hand. She gazed into it thoughtfully.
"How did you find me?" said Adel.
"I asked Speedy." She let it fall to her chest and Adel saw the eating man again. Adel had noticed that her eating man had reappeared again and again, always at the same table. "You want breakfast?"
He was annoyed with her for rousting him out of bed before morning chime. "When I wake up." Who knew what erotic treats he might miss?
"Your eyes look open to me." She gave him a knowing smile. "Busy night?"
He considered telling her that it was none of her business, but decided to flirt instead. Maybe he'd get lucky. "Busy enough." He gave his shoulders a twitch, which made his cape flutter. "You?"
"I slept."
"I slept too." Adel waited a beat. "Eventually."
"Gods, Adel!" Kamilah laughed out loud. "You're a handful, you know that?" She put an arm around his shoulders and started walking him back up Dream Street. "Meri and Jarek had better watch out."
Adel wasn't quite sure what she meant but he decided to let it drop for now. "So what's this about?"
"A field trip." They started down the Tulip Stairway. "What do you know about physics?"
Adel had studied comparative entertainment at Great Randall S&A, although he'd left school in his third year to train for the Harvest Olympics and to find himself. Unfortunately, he'd finished only sixth in the 200 meters and Adel was still pretty much missing. Science in general and physics in particular had never been a strength. "I know some. Sort of."
"What's the first law of thermodynamics?"
"The first law of thermodynamics." He closed his eyes and tried to picture the screen. "Something like . . . um . . . a body stays in motion . . . ah . . . as long as it's in motion?"
"Oh great," she said wearily. "Have you ever been in space?"
For the first time in days he missed the familiar buzz of his opposites. He lifted their mute.
—she thinks we're a moron—buzzed minus.
—we are a moron—plus buzzed.
"Everybody's in space," he said defensively. "That's where all the planets are. We're traveling through space this very moment."
"This wasn't meant to be a trick question," she said gently. "I mean have you ever been in a hardsuit out in the vacuum?"
"Oh," he said. "No."
"You want to?"
—wow—
—yes—
He had to restrain himself from hugging her. "Absolutely."
"Okay then." She gestured at the entrance to the Chillingsworth Breakfasting Room. "Let's grab something to take away and head down to the locker room. We need to oxygenate for about half an hour."
—but why is she doing this?—buzzed plus.
There were two ways to the surface of the Godspeed: through the great bay doors of the Well Met Arena or out the Clarke Airlock. Adel straddled a bench in the pre-breathing locker room and wolfed down a sausage and honeynut torte while Kamilah explained what was about to happen.
"We have to spend another twenty-minutes here breathing a hundred percent oxygen to scrub nitrogen out of our bodies. Then just before we climb into the hardsuits, we put on isotherms." She opened a locker and removed two silky black garments. "You want to wait until the last minute; isotherms take some getting used to. But they keep the hardsuit from overheating." She tossed one to Adel.
"But how can that happen?" He held the isotherm up; it had a hood and opened with a slide down the torso. The sleeves ended at the elbow and the pants at the knee. "Isn't space just about as cold as anything gets?"
"Yes, but the hardsuit is airtight, which makes it hard to dissipate all the heat that you're going to be generating. Even though you get some servoassist, it's a big rig, Adel. You've got to work to get anywhere." She raised her steaming mug of kappa and winked at him. "Think you're man enough for the job?"
—let that pass—buzzed plus.
"I suppose we'll know soon enough." Adel rubbed the fabric of the isotherm between his thumb and forefinger. It was cool to the touch.
Kamilah sipped from the mug. "Once we're out on the surface," she said, "Speedy will be running all your systems. All you have to do is follow me."
The Godspeed displayed on a section of wall. She was wearing an isotherm with the hood down; it clung to her like a second skin. Adel could see the outline of her nipples and the subtle wrinkles her public hair made in the fabric.
—but they're not real—minus buzzed.
"What are you doing, Kamilah?" said the Godspeed. "You were out just last week."
"Adel hasn't seen the view."
"I can show him any view he wants. I can fill the Welcome Arena with stars. He can see in ultraviolet. Infrared."
"Yes, but it wouldn't be quite real, would it?"
"Reality is over-rated." The Godspeed waggled a finger at Kamilah. "You're taking an unusual interest in young Adel. I'm watching, perfect one. "
"You're watching everyone, Speedy. That's how you get your cookies." With that she pulled the top of her scrubs off. "Time to get naked, Adel. Walk our hardsuits out and start the checklist, would you, Speedy?"
—those are real—buzzed minus.
—Meri and Jarek remember—
—we can look—
And Adel did look as he slithered out of his own clothes. Although he was discreet about it, he managed to burn indelible images into his memory of Kamilah undressing, the curve of her magnificent hip, the lush pendency of her breasts, the breathtaking expanse of her back as her tawny skin stretched tight over nubs of her spine. She was a woman a man might drown in. Abruptly, he realized that he was becoming aroused. He turned away from her, tossed his clothes into a locker, snatched at the isotherm and pulled it on.
And bit back a scream.
Although it was as silken as when Kamilah had pulled it out of the drawer, his isotherm felt like it had spent the last ten years in cryogenic storage. Adel's skin crawled beneath it and his hands curled into fists. As a swimmer, Adel had experienced some precipitous temperature changes, but he'd never dived into a pool filled with liquid hydrogen.
—trying to kill us—screeched minus.
"Are you all right?" said Kamilah. "Your eyes look like eggs."
"Ah," said Adel. "Ah."
—we can do this—buzzed plus.
"Hang on," said Kamilah. "It passes."
As the hardsuits clumped around the corner of the locker room, their servos singing, Adel shivered and caught his breath. He thought he could hear every joint crack as he unclenched his fists and spread his fingers. When he pulled the isotherm hood over his head, he got the worst ice cream headache he'd ever had.
"This is going to be fun," he said through clenched teeth.
The hardsuits were gleaming white eggs with four arms, two legs and a tail. The arms on either side were flexrobotic and built for heavy lifting. Beside them were fabric sleeves into which a spacewalker could insert his arms for delicate work. The legs ended in ribbed plates, as did the snaking tail, which Kamilah explained could be used as a stabilizer or an anchor. A silver ball the size of coconut perched at the top of the suit.
"Just think of them as spaceships that walk," said Kamilah. "Okay, Speedy. Pop the tops."
The top, translucent third of each egg swung back. Kamilah muscled a stairway up to the closest hardsuit. "This one's yours. Settle in but don't try moving just yet."
Adel slid his legs into the suit's legs and cool gel flowed around them, locking him into place. He ducked instinctively as the top came down, but he had plenty of room. Seals fasten with a scritch and the heads up display on the inside of the top began to glow with controls and diagnostics. Beneath the translucent top were fingerpads for controlling the robotic lifter arms; near them were the holes of the hardsuit's sleeves. Adel stuck his arms through, flexed his fingers in the gloves then turned his attention back to the HUD. He saw that he had forty hours of oxygen reserve and his batteries were at 98% of capacity. The temperature in the airlock was 15.52oC and the air pressure was 689 millibars. Then the readouts faded and The Godspeed was studying him intently. She looked worried.
"Adel, what's going on?"
"Is something going on?"
"I'm afraid there is and I don't want you mixed up in it. What does Kamilah want with you?"
Adel felt a chill that had nothing to do with his isotherm.
—don't say anything—buzzed plus
—we don't know anything—
"I don't know that she wants anything." He pulled his arms out of the hardsuit's sleeves and folded them across his chest. "I just thought she was being nice."
"All right, Adel," said Kamilah over the comm. "Take a stroll around the room. I want to see how you do in here where it's flat. Speedy will compensate if you have any trouble. I'm sure she's already in your ear."
The Godspeed held a forefinger to her lips. "Kamilah is going to ask you to turn off your comm. That's when you must be especially careful, Adel." With that, she faded away and Adel was staring, slack-jawed, at the HUD.
"Adel?" said Kamilah. "Are you napping in there?"
Adel took a couple of tentative steps. Moving the hardsuit was a little like walking on stilts. He was high off the floor and couldn't really see or feel what was beneath his feet. When he twisted around, he caught sight of the tail whipping frantically behind him. But after walking for a few minutes, he decided that he could manage the suit. He lumbered behind Kamilah through the inner hatch of the airlock, which slid shut.
Adel listened to the muted chatter of pumps evacuating the lock until finally there wasn't enough air to carry sound. Moments later, the outer hatch opened.
"Ready?" Kamilah said. "Remember that we're leaving the artificial gravity field. No leaps or bounds—you don't watch to achieve escape velocity."
Adel nodded.
—she can't see us—buzzed minus—we have to talk to her—
Adel cleared his throat. "I've always wanted to see the stars from space."
"Actually, you won't have much of a view until later," she said. "Let's go." As they passed through the hatch, the Godspeed announced, "Suit lights are on. I'm deploying fireflies."
Adel saw the silver ball lift from the top of Kamilah's suit and float directly above her. The bottom half of it was now incandescent, lighting the surface of the Godspeed against the swarming darkness. At the same time the ground around him lit up. He looked and saw his firefly hovering about a meter over the suit.
—amazing—buzzed plus—we're out, we're out in space—
They crossed the flat staging pad just outside the airlock and stepped off onto the regolith. The rock had been pounded to gray dust by centuries of foot traffic. Whenever he took a step the dust puffed underfoot and drifted slowly back to the ground like smoke. It was twenty centimeters deep in some places but offered little resistance to his footplates. Adel's excitement leached slowly away as Kamilah led him away from the airlock. He had to take mincing steps to keep from launching himself free of the Godspeed's tenuous gravitational pull. It was frustrating; he felt as if he were walking with a pillow between his legs. The sky was a huge disappointment as well. The fireflies washed out the light from all but the brightest stars. He'd seen better skies camping on Harvest.
"So where are we going?"
"Just around."
"How long will it take?"
"Not that long."
—hiding something?—buzzed plus.
—definitely—
"And what exactly are we going to do?"
"A little bit of everything. One of her robotic arms gave him a playful wave. "You'll see."
They marched in silence for a while. Adel began to chafe at following Kamilah's lead. He picked up his pace and drew alongside of her. The regolith here was not quite so trampled and much less regular, although a clearly defined trail showed that they were not the first to make this trek. They passed stones and rubble piles and boulders the size of houses and the occasional impact crater that the path circumnavigated.
—impact crater?—buzzed minus.
"Uh, Kamilah," he said. "How often does Speedy get hit by meteors?"
"Never," said Kamilah. "The craters you see are all pre-launch. Interstellar space is pretty much empty so it's not that much of a problem."
"I sweep the sky for incoming debris," said the Godspeed, "up to five million meters away."
> "And that works?"
"So far," said Kamilah. "We wouldn't want to slam into anything traveling at a third the speed of light."
They walked on for another ten minutes before Kamilah stopped. "There." She pointed. "That's where we came from. Somewhere out there is home."
Adel squinted. There was pretty much meaningless. Was she pointing at some particular star or a space between stars?"
"This is the backside. If Speedy had a rear bumper," she said, "we'd be standing on it right here. I want to show you something interesting. Pull your arms out of the sleeves."
"Done."
"The comm toggle is under the right arm keypad. Switch it off."
The Godspeed broke into their conversation. "Kamilah and Adel, you are about to disable a key safety feature of your hardsuits. I strongly urge you to reconsider."
"I see the switch." Adel's throat was tight. "You know, Speedy warned me about this back in the airlock."
"I'm sure she did. We go through this every time."
"You've done this before?"
"Many times," she said. "It's a tradition we've started to bring the new arrival out here to see the sights. It's actually a spiritual thing, which is why Speedy doesn't really get it."
"I have to turn off the comm why?"
"Because she's watching, Adel," said Kamilah impatiently. "She's always with us. She can't help herself."
"Young Adel," murmured the Godspeed. "Remember what I said."
—trust Kamilah—
—or trust Speedy—
—we were warned—
Adel flicked the toggle. "Now what?" he said to himself. His voice sounded very small in the suit.
He was startled when Kamilah leaned her suit against his so that the tops of the eggs were touching. It was strangely intimate maneuver, almost like a kiss. Her face was an electric green shadow in the glow of the HUD.
He was startled again when she spoke. "Turn. The. Comm. Off." He could hear her through the suit. She paused between each word, her voice reedy and metallic.
"I did," he said.
He could see her shake her head and tap fingers to her ears. "You. Have. To. Shout."
> "I. Did!" Adel shouted.
"Good." She picked up a rock the size of a fist and held it at arm's length. "Drop. Rock." She paused. "Count. How. Long. To. Surface."
—science experiments?—buzzed plus.
—she's gone crazy—
Adel was inclined to agree with his minus but what Kamilah was asking seemed harmless enough.
"Ready?"
"Yes."
She let go. Adel counted.
One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five . . .
And it was down.
"Yes?" said Kamilah.
"Five."
"Good. Keep. Secret." She paused. "Comm. On."
As he flicked the switch he heard her saying. " . . . you feel it? My first time it was too subtle but if you concentrate, you'll get it."
"Are you all right, Adel?" murmured the Godspeed. "What just happened?"
"I don't know," said Adel, mystified.
"Well, we can try again on the frontside," said Kamilah. "Sometimes it's better there. Let's go."
—what is she talking about?—minus buzzed.
For twenty minutes he trudged in perplexed silence past big rocks, little rocks and powdered rocks in all the colors of gray. In some places the surface of the trail was grainy like sand, in others it was dust, and in yet others it was bare ledge. Adel just didn't understand what he was supposed to have gotten from watching the rocks drop. Something to do with gravity? What he didn't know about gravity would fill a barn. Eventually he gave up trying to figure it out. Kamilah was right about one thing: it was real work walking in a hardsuit. If it hadn't been for the isotherm, he would have long since broken a sweat.
—this is has to get better—buzzed plus.
"How much longer?" said Adel at last.
"A while yet." Kamilah chuckled. "What are you, a little kid?"
"Remember the day I got here?" he said. "You told me that you were sentenced to spend time on Speedy. But you never said why."
"Not that interesting, really."
"Better than counting rocks." He stomped on a flat stone the size of his hand, breaking it into three pieces. "Or I suppose I could sing." He gave her the first few bars of "Do As We Don't" in his finest atonal yodel.
"Gods, Adel, but you're a pest today." Kamilah sighed. "All right, so there's a religion on Suncast . . . "
"Suncast? That's where you're from?"
"That's where I was from. If I ever get off this rock, that's the last place I'm going to stay."
—if?—buzzed minus—why did she say if?—
Anyway, there's a sect that call themselves God's Own Poor. They're very proud of themselves for having deliberately chosen not to own very much. They spout these endless lectures about how living simply is the way to true spirituality. It's all over the worldnet. And they have this tradition that once a year they leave their houses and put their belongings into a cart, supposedly everything they own but not really. Each of them drags the cart to a park or a campground—this takes place in the warm weather, naturally—and they spend two weeks congratulating themselves on how poor they are and how God loves them especially."
"What god do they worship?"
"A few pray to Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the galaxy, but most are some flavor of Eternal Centerers. When it was founded, the Poor might actually have been a legitimate religion. I mean, I see their point that owning too much can get in the way. Except that now almost all of them have houses and furniture and every kind of vehicle. None of them tries to fit the living room couch on their carts. And you should see some of these carts. They cost more than I make in a year."
"From shocking people," Adel said. "As a professional eyejack."
The comm was silent for a moment. "Are you teasing me, young Adel?"
"No, no." Adel bit back his grin. "Not at all." Even though he knew she couldn't see it, she could apparently hear it inflected in his voice. "So you were annoyed at them?"
"I was. Lots of us were. It wasn't only that they were self-righteous hypocrites. I didn't like the way they commandeered the parks just when the rest of us wanted to use them. So I asked myself, how can I shock the Poor and what kind of purse can I make from doing it?"
A new trail diverged from the one they had been following, Kamilah considered for a moment and then took it. She fell silent for a few moments.
Adel prompted her. "And you came up with a plan."
—why are we interested in this?—buzzed plus.
—because we want to get her into bed—
"I did. First I took out a loan; I had to put my house up as collateral. I split two hundred thousand barries across eight hundred cash cards, so each one was worth two hundred and fifty. Next I set up my tent at the annual Poverty Revival at Point Kingsley on the Prithee Sea, which you've never heard of but which is one of the most beautiful places in the Continuum. I passed as one of the Poor, mingling with about ten thousand true believers. I parked a wheelbarrow outside the tent that had nothing in it but a suitcase and a shovel. That got a megagram of disapproval, which told me I was onto something. Just before dawn on the tenth day of the encampment, I tossed the suitcase and shoveled in the eight hundred cash cards. I parked my wheelbarrow at the Tabernacle of the Center and waited with a spycam. I'd painted, 'God Helps Those Who Help Themselves' on the side; I thought that was a nice touch. I was there when people started to discover my little monetary miracle. I shot vids of several hundred of the Poor dipping their hot hands into the cards. Some of them just grabbed a handful and ran, but quite a few tried to sneak up on the wheelbarrow when nobody was looking. But of course, everyone was. The wheelbarrow was empty in about an hour and a half, but people kept coming to look all morning."
Adel was puzzled. "But your sign said they were supposed to help themselves," he said. "Why would they be ashamed?"
"Well, they were supposed to be celebrating their devotion to poverty, not padding their personal assets. But the vids were just documentation, they weren't the sting. Understand that the cards were mine. Yes, I authorized all expenditures, but I also collected detailed reports on everything they bought. Everything, as in possessions, Adel. Material goods. All kinds of stuff, and lots of it. I posted the complete record. For six days my website was one of the most active on the worldnet. Then the local Law Exchange shut me down. Still, even after legal expenses and paying off the loan, I cleared almost three thousand barries."
—brilliant—buzzed minus.
—she got caught—plus buzzed.
"But this was against the law on Suncast?" said Adel.
"Actually, no." Kamilah kicked at a stone and sent it skittering across the regolith. She trudged on in silence for a few moments. "But I used a wheelbarrow," she said finally, "which LEX ruled was too much like one of their carts—a cultural symbol. According to LEX, I had committed Intolerant Speech. If I had just set the cards out in a basket, the Poor couldn't have touched me. But I didn't and they did. In the remedy phase of my trial, the Poor asked LEX to ship me here. I guess they thought I'd get religion."