She jerked a nod. “Of course,” she replied curtly. “Do you suppose I didn’t learn how to bide my time, already in Palmyra? But I don’t have to like it.”
She swung her legs around, stood, reached for the robe she had hung on a hook. “I’m not sleepy, either,” she said. “I’m going to a dream box and get relaxed.” Unspoken was that evidently he had not eased her, though she had faked.
He sat up. “You go too often,” he protested without force.
“That’s my business.” She pulled the garment over her head, paused for a moment, met his eyes, glanced away again. “Sorry, Gnaeus. I am being bitchy. Wish me a better mood tomorrow, will you?” She leaned down to ruffle the shag on his chest before she departed, barefoot as she had arrived. The deck surfacing was soft, springy, almost like turf.
The corridor reached empty, dimly lit at this hour. Ventilation gave a breeze and a susurrus. She rounded a corner and stopped. Wanderer did too.
“Why, hello, there,” Aliyat said in American English. “Haven’t seen much of you for a while.” She smiled. “Where are you bound for?”
16
THE CLOSER Pytheas flew on-the heels of light, the more alien it and the outside universe became to each other. One did not care to look long into the viewscreens any more, if at all. The interior hull became like a set of caves, warm bright huddling places. Escape from their closeness lay in whatever work could be found or made; in sports, games, skills, reading, music, shows, traditional diversions; in the pseudo-lives of every sort that that computer engendered for those who linked with it.
The circumstances were by no means bad. Most of mankind throughout most of history would have considered them paradise. Still, as Hanno had once implied, it was as well that to immortals, a year could feel like quite a short span. And perhaps that was only true, or only true enough, of the Survivors. Had any modern human lived sufficiently long? Would any ever learn how to tough out hard times, especially the hard times of the spirit? Was a subliminal doubt of it the underlying reason why none had hitherto ventured this faring?
Be that as it may, challenges became welcome.
Phaeacia—Hanno had suggested the name—was not Earth. The robot explorers reported an extraordinary degree of similarity: sun, orbit, mass, composition, spin, tectonics, satellite; countlessly many factors seemed necessary to beget life chemistry closely resembling the terrestrial. Such worlds were few indeed (though “few,” given the size of the galaxy, might add up to hundreds). Yet nothing was identical and much, perhaps most, utterly foreign. The absence of anything sentient was merely the difference plainest to humans, and probably the least important.
Moreover, Phaeacia was less known than the goal Hanno had originally had in mind. It lay almost one hundred fifty light-years from Earth, near the edge of the communication sphere. Thus far a single mission had reached it and, when Pytheas left, a dozen years’ worth of reports had been received. It was a world, as various and mysterious as ever Earth herself in her prehistory.
The robots were still investigating. Pytheas couldn’t catch their messages while en route, but they would download tHeir entire data-hoard when it arrived. Doubtless the astonishments that waited were enormous. The travelers might spend a year or more in orbit, assimilating, before they took their first boat to the surface.
Meanwhile, why not practice? To gain familiarity with the material was elementary prudence, incomplete and often wrong though it must be; hands-on experience was best gotten in advance, illusory though it must be.
The senses no longer knew the gymnasium. Overhead arched sky, virginaUy blue save for clouds that were like breaths off the snowpeaks at the horizon. The countryside round about lay verdant with blades that were not really grass; trees swayed to a lulling wind that smelled of their resin and the sun; wings swept that air, and afar a herd of beasts galloped, swift and graceful. Wanderer remembered Jackson Hole as once it had been. His bean cracked.
Mastering himself, he stooped to pluck a rock out of the spring bubbling at his feet. It glittered quartzlike. The heft of it was cold in his hand. Yes, he thought, I’d better brush up my geology.