“Ah, we’ve been there a hundred times. How ’bout we hop over to Zanthu? I know a place there, not virtual, realies, it’s got apparatuses and tricks you never —”
“No, I’m not in that kind of mood. I don’t know what I want to do.”
“My nerves have been terrible lately. I think they’re trying to tell me something. I refuse medication. I might try this new Yanist religion. It should at least be amusing.”
“Say, have you heard about Marli’s latest? Who was seen coming out of her bedroom?”
Ignore them, Kenri thought. They may be of Nivala’s class, but they’re not of her kind. She’s a from Canda. An old family, proud, the blood of soldiers in them.
A Kithman’s not too unlike a soldier.
Their building loomed into view, stone and crystal and light mounting heavenward. Their crest flamed on its front. The depression that had dogged him let go. He signaled his stop and rose. She loves me, sang within him. We have a life before us.
Pain stabbed into his right buttock, through his back and down the leg. He stumbled, fell to a knee, and looked around. A boy grinned and waved a shockstick. Everybody began to laugh. He picked himself up and limped to the exit. The laughter followed him.
Aboard ship he served in the navigation department. Ordinarily one person was plenty to stand watch in the immensity between suns. The room was big, however. With interior illumination dimmed, it became a twilit grotto where instrument panels shone like muted lamps. The viewscreens dominated it, fireballs fore and aft, sparks streaming from them across the dark to melt into a girdle of intermingled keen hues. Air moved inaudibly; it was as if the ship kept silence before that sight.
When Nivala came in, Kenri forgot to bow. His heart sprang, his breath stopped. She wore a long, close-fitting blue gown, which rustled to her stride. The unbound tresses fell over bare shoulders in waves of pale gold.
She halted. Her eyes widened. A hand went to her mouth. “O-o-o-oh,” she whispered.
“Weird, isn’t it?” was the lame best he found to say. “But you’ve surely seen pictures and virtuals.”
“Yes. Not like this. Not at all like this. It’s nearly terrifying.”
He went to stand before her. “An optical effect, you know, Freelady. The system here doesn’t process photons captured in the instants between zero-zero jumps. It displays the scene during the jumps, when we’re moving close to the speed of light. Aberration displaces the stars in the field, Doppler shift changes their colors. Among other things, these readings help us monitor our vectors.”
He was suddenly afraid he had sounded patronizing, afraid not that she would be angry but that she would think him a pedantic fool. Instead, she smiled and looked from the sky to him. “Yes, I do know. Thank you for trying to reassure me with a lecture, but it wasn’t necessary.” Seriousness returned. “I misspoke myself. I should have said ‘overawing.’ The other face of the universe, and I’m not being shown it, I’m meeting it.”
“I’m, uh, glad you like it.”
“A passenger, like a child, wasn’t allowed in vital sections on Eagle,” she said. And you didn’t use your status to force your way in, he thought. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“My pleasure, Freelady. I knew you wouldn’t do anything stupid.”
“It was good of you, Kenri Shaun.” Her fingers brushed his knuckles. “You’re always kind to me.”
“Could anybody be anything else, to you?” he blurted.
Did she blush? He couldn’t tell, in this dusk he had made for her to get the most from the spectacle. She eased him when she said merely, slowly, “I’d be interested to hear what you do at your post.”
“Usually not much,” he admitted. “The computer handles the data; the navigator’s in case of emergency. But need for a human can arise. No two routes are ever identical, you see, because the stars move — not negligibly in the course of centuries. Likewise dark dwarf nebulae, black holes, or rogue planets. They’re extremely few and far between, but for that very reason they haven’t all been identified, and encountering any would be fatal. Comparing the high-velocity and low-velocity starscapes gives clues to possible hazards ahead — spectral absortion lines or gravitational lensings, for instance. But interpreting them can take more, well, creative imagination than a computer program has. Twice in my time, a navigator’s called for a course change. And, oftener, he or she’s decided it wasn’t necessary, the alarm was false.”