He laughed. “Of course not. And even if it did, there’s nothing to be done about it. You’re starclad now, youngling.”
“How come it happened so fast?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Usually the change is more gradual. Maybe the shift of light inside the wormhole accelerated the process.”
“There wasn’t any light—was there?”
“Of course there was light. You’re confusing your basic physics. That was a wormhole, not a black hole.”
“I know that,” she said. “I’m just young, not stupid. But I didn’t see any light till -we came out on this side.”
“You probably blacked out,” he said. “Fear will do that. Your first time in space and all that.”
“I Did not,” she told him. “I just didn’t see any light. Did YOU? Honestly?”
“Well, no, but then, probably I couldn’t pick it up. We were ravelling so fast and it~”
“Forgotten your basic physics?” she asked sweetly.
“What’s next on the course?”
“Cross this planetary system from here,” she put her finger on a purplish planet that -was farthest from its sun, “to over here,” this was past the seventh planet from the sun, “and then there’s a sort of funny part of space-bumpy, as if it’s pleated. …”
“You can see that?” he asked, peering at her finger as if it had eyes.
“I did the simulation, silly. Maybe you should, too. Oh. I forgot. Experienced Starfarers don’t need to do that stuff.”
“We’ll have no insubordination out of you, youngling.”
“Fine. You asked. I told you.”
She left him alone on the bridge and stomped down to the hydroponics area to do some serious grazing. And pouting, if the truth be known. The Condor had been gone for six weeks before the Nlikaavri launched. They had only been in space for ten sleep periods. Maati tried to think about what she would say to her parents if she saw them again, how she -would convince Khornya and Aari to let her stay with them instead of returning to narhiiVhiliinyar. But even her vivid imagination began to run out of ideas after a while. She thought about it, analyzed the jittery feeling that made it hard for her to sit still. That wasn’t all. Her attention wandered at any excuse, and everything Thariinye said was sounding even stupider than usual. She had a thousand questions about how everything on the ship worked, but lacked the patience to listen to Thariinye’s lectures on the subject. She wanted to climb behind the panels and see how things worked instead of just sitting and waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
She was bored. Here she was on the greatest adventure or her whole life and she was sooooo bored. She was used to having the run of Kubiilikhan, keeping so busy she was exhausted at the end of the day. To having conversations with people from all walks of life all over the city and surrounding countryside. Here on this ship she mostly sat. And talked to Thariinye. Who treated her like a baby. By the Ancestors, something had better happen soon!
Her wish was granted in seven more sleep periods. She had been using the LAANYE Thariinye brought along to brush up on Khornya’s language-Standard. She wanted to be as fluent as possible when she saw Khornya, Aan, and Captain Becker again. If she could speak the language, maybe they wouldn’t fuss too much when she announced she intended to stay with them, wanted to go back with them to that moon Khornya had mentioned where all the children lived and learned new skills.
It was her watch and she was tired of studying. If only the Condor weren’t still so far awayl Linyaari ships were faster than those of the humans, so they should be overtaking the salvage vessel before long, but she wished fervently that they were there already. She ran the course simulation again, wondering if maybe she could plot a more direct route Instead of simply following Thariinye’s extrapolation of the Condor’s course.
As she calculated and plotted her various trajectories, she noticed some familiar-looking coordinates among her calculations.
Thariinye?” she said, speaking into the onboard hailing system.
He huffed and snorted, from which she gathered that she’d awakened him.