Jo was a connoisseur, a taster of space and untangler of lines.
Her home was
in the dark place between stars; she stitched the edge of stars
where the
galaxy faded into the sea of night.
I don't know what she was doing so far inside, nor what she
wanted from me.
Here we were, early summer on Gamma Lyrae IV, another deserted
planet left
for nature to mend. If nature wanted it back.
The ship was sitting on a patch of grey-green scrubland, coarse
grass by
what was once a beach. Something, some... process had fused the
sand into
a vitreous slab, dark blue with lightening-thin traceries of
white, red,
yellow, stretching down to the brown ocean that lay slow,
breathing like a
drugged animal in the heat haze.
I'd picked Jo up in orbit; her ship couldn't make landfall. I was
surprised
it was safe so close to a star. These people stripped everything
off, every
gramme of mass that wasn't absolutely necessary. Usually more.
Her's was
typical - I'd taken pictures of it during the rendezvous; all
struts around
the bare drive, silver shield bubble where she lived, a ship on
the edge of
starvation.
"Here we are." I said. "Shall we go out?"
I'd brought a powered suit for her thinking she probably hadn't
had to move
under gee for years. There was no chance she'd bothered with
maintenance.
Even so, I'd been shocked by her appearance, after she'd floated
across and
stripped off. If the ship was emanciated, she was a skeleton,
asexual, gaunt,
paper skin wrapped around structural bones, hairless, tiny. Her
eyes were
coal-black from lid to lid, corner to corner. Holes in the skull.
She had said barely a word during descent, breathing heavily. I
doubt she
could remember full pressure, and my curiosity itched the harder.
Then she
did something that shocked me. She laughed.
"It would be silly to come all this way and not check out
the scenery. I would
like that suit you offered, though. I'd forgotten what this was
like"
She held up an arm, twig-thin, and let it fall.
We went outside, into the knee-high vegetation. She walked, a
little too fast,
as a kid in her first suit, over to the edge of the glass beach.
"Come here..."
I followed. The air smelled sweet and hot, and clouds of pollen
drifted up
from the grass as I waded, dispersing slowly in the comatose air.
She was smiling broadly.
"Isn't it wonderful? Sunlight, sea, the noise of the
wind..."
Apart from a quiet shush where the sea played with small pebbles,
the place
was still.
"I can't hear any wind, but as places go this is better than
most." I said,
not sure whether she was being serious.
"Ah, I shouldn't tease. I have something important I want to
ask, and you're
the best person I can think of..."
"Thank you, but I'm sure I don't know how you've heard of
me."
She pouted and shrugged; I had a sudden glimmering that once she
would have
been very beautiful.
"What do you know of me, us? Mad people who've run a little
further than
most from the mess?" She faced me; it was unsettling seeing
those wide black
eyes, not knowing where she was looking.
"I've never really thought... we're all free people, out
here..."
"That's not true. Tell me, free person, what you were doing
before I called?"
That was supposed to be a secret, and I'm good at those. I scared
myself when
I told her, without hesitation.
"Wiring a place, aetherics... making a computer that could
second-guess a
government."
"Get paid?"
"Of course. I'm good at what I do."
"You like working for people like that?"
I didn't answer, but looked at the sea melding into the
glittering glass, a
thousand colours from a broken kaleidoscope.
"No." I said, after a moment. "It's just
work."
"That lets you do what? Oh, I'm teasing... I know that as
well. I've read
your history books. They're even better than your aetherics,
computer
people tell me."
"You want me to write you a history book?" I've always
dreamed of finding
a rich, eccentric client. Haven't we all.
She laughed again, and I wondered how used she was to this much
oxygen.
"It's an expensive hobby hunting for clues," she said,
"People who like
history don't have as much money as people who need your
computers. Sad,
isn't it... it would be so much easier if we enjoyed selling what
we sold."
"Unlucky prostitutes," I said, "we picked the
wrong trade and now we're too
good to stop. What do you sell to your vacuum?"
"I'd have thought you'd have done your research to impress
your potential
client," she said. "How do you think I pay for my life,
those years
drifting out where the grasp of gravity gives way to a
whisper?"
I had an idea, half-remembered articles about people like her and
their
poetry.
"Don't you make art?", I asked.
She lay back on the grass, a young girl's doll being tucked up in
bed.
"Some do... all do, if you want. Some of us -- the best of
us -- find
ourselves a sugar daddy, and... can't you guess?"
I looked at her, half-hidden by the grass, pale face, eyes shut.
Bare head.
"Oh... "
"I spent three years as deep out as I've ever been, months
at a time out of
the ship, not asleep, not awake, aware. I can feel space when
there's nothing
else, when the particles of my mind are free to spin and jump in
the purity
of the laws that set them alive... and then I came back, and they
plugged me
into a machine". The words were a monotone, quiet, almost
swamped by the
seaslush.
"For your client", I said.
"For my client. In five minutes, he'd sucked out the
experience through his
wires and swallowed it in one gulp, like an oyster. It was the
hardest work
I've done, the deepest... there are no words for it, no poetry,
nothing but
hints throughout history."
"Get paid?" I asked.
She sat up, and hugged her knees.
"Enough to go out for five years, this time. Enough for a
better ship, more
operations on it and me... but I can't do it. There must come a
time when a
whore shuts the door on her last trick, and swears never again,
counts the
pennies and buys that small cottage."
"Is that what you want? I don't build cottages"
"No, but you build computers that have certain special
qualities. That don't
exist. I don't understand how they work, but I read the layman's
translations
of the textbooks and I know the place they describe..."
I thought I had it.
"You think one of my magic weaves could help you? I doubt it
- the core of
the computer is what you've read about, all nips and tucks in
spacetime, bent
maths and impossible law, but they need so much machinery around
them to
protect the matrix and provide the interface. It would treble the
mass of
your ship, even before you put in the drive to move it around the
place"
She shook her head, and I had a momentary vision of long, dark
hair falling
around smooth shoulders.
"I know. That's not what I want. Tell me, do you know how
the mindreaders
work, like the one that my client used?"
I saw clearly, at last.
"Yes... You don't want information from me, you want me to
put you into a box"
"Close. Would I need the box?"
"Aetherics are delicate; a little gravity, a bit of
radiation and they're
broken..." I didn't need to finish.
"My home is out, where there's nothing."
I tried to argue, but I knew she'd get what she wanted.
"It's dangerous - I don't know how long the matrix would
hold up, or nearly
enough about deep space. I could put you in, but it's not an
exact science -
whatever it is you've got that makes you sensitive might not
survive the
transition... and when the matrix is free, you won't be a part of
this
universe any more. Nobody will be able to help you, find you,
talk to you..."
"But you could do it? Put me in the box, and then open the
lid?"
I knew she was looking into my eyes, then.
"Yes," I said. "I can do it."
She and I spent two months on my ship, planning, sorting out
details,
researching. It would cost more than her net worth, many times
more, but
she had an especially gullible client still in awe from her last
contract.
She promised him everything, knowing that she'd be beyond even
his well-funded
anger when he realised.
The time came, and I was sad. I'd borrowed a university ship for
the drop --
I'd let some friends in on the plan, and scientific curiosity
moves more
mountains than faith these days -- and we were out deep. Jo's
body lay,
quiet, on a couch, her head covered in the warm metal of the
mindreader. We'd
agreed that once she'd been put under for the transfer, I'd not
let her
wake up again. That was the hardest part.
It took a week to build the matrix, and I've never done a better
job before or
since. I wonder, sometimes, if I have some of her sense; I could
certainly
feel the aetherics spin and grow in harmony. Could just be a
taste for the
job.
Then it was time.
"Jo?" I asked,
"It's dark," the machine answered "but I'm still
me. Not warm, not cold...
it's home... let me go..."
"Any moment. I've got one question, though. Why did we meet
on that planet?"
"Look it up. You're the historian..." She was teasing
again.
I froze the matrix; giving it stability enough to survive close
to the ship
long enough. When it thawed, we had to be far away.
I sat down at the console, and gave the order to start the
sequence. It went
well enough, I suppose; I surprised myself again, and when I
could see through
the tears it was all over.
I looked up Gamma Lyrae. Its old Earth name was Sulahfat, The
Tortoise, the
constellation it was part of. Also called The Lyre. There's a
legend that
says the first lyre was made from a dead tortoise, washed up on a
beach, the
shell making the sounding box and the tendons the strings. I
still think she
was teasing me.
I wonder where she is.
I miss her.
(c) rg