A Princess of the Aerie (19 page)

The inner door closed behind them. With a strange shimmer, air left the surrounding chamber. A mechanical voice said, “Vacuum
tight, power systems good, all systems go.” The outer doors dilated. The tractor platform slid forward again. The craft rolled
180 degrees as it matched up the linducer grapple with the tube.

They were launching away from the sun, and from Jak’s viewport, three of the arms of the Aerie were visible, each a long string
of habitats reaching far out into the starry sky. In the forward camera, the
Spirit of Singing Port
was now fully in view, and with her vast shining sails, a mere few hundred molecules thick but with as much surface area
as Earth, Venus, and Mars put together, now only about half a million kilometers away, she covered much of the sky with graceful
bright arcs and curves.

They accelerated through twenty thousand kilometers (two-thirds again the diameter of the Earth) at about a half g, going
from the docking body to the end of the line in barely over forty-five minutes. The effect of continuous acceleration was
that they seemed to creep along at first as the early habitats went by; it took them eight minutes to get as far out as the
innermost habitats, but they flashed past the last ones at the thirty-sixth minute, moving at many times the speed of a bullet.
After a five last minutes in which they traveled the diameter of Mars, the hot jets flared, the linducer grapple released,
and they shot into space.

The hot jets fired three bursts of a few seconds each, putting the ferry on trajectory to intercept the sunclipper, and cut
out. All onboard gravity ceased. The mechanical voice announced that about ten hours of free fall could be expected, a very
short ferry flight. The upbound ferry and the downbound ship were in virtually head-on courses, and the distance—only about
twice that from the Earth to the Moon—would close very quickly.

On the other hand, ten hours might be a short ferry flight, but it was a very long time to be trapped in a metal box with
Mreek Sinda, especially when there were far more interesting things in every screen and window. From the sunward side the
Spirit of Singing Port
was almost too bright to look at; drag-tacking, as she was doing right now to drop into Mercury’s much lower orbit, the ship
had dozens of Asia-or-bigger-sized mainsails spread with hundreds of droguettes, prabs, funnels, and tripos in wild profusion;
the smallest prab merely about the area of Greenland, the largest mainsail bigger than the Pacific Ocean, all woven of stuff
that was bright as a mirror, less than one-ten-thousandth the thickness of sandwich wrap, and stronger than steel plate. Reflections
of the sun danced off all the sails, bright as the original, and in the gentle ripples and waves that ceaselessly played across
the sails, sunlight and starlight in sudden, bright, moving curves that briefly formed recurving circles, s-shapes, and bows.
Now and again the Aerie itself reflected in the sails.

After about an hour, Mreek Sinda cleared her throat. “I think I’d be remiss in my duty if I didn’t at least try to interview
the three of you while we’re all trapped here.” They were in free fall, now, all drifting around the small ferry cabin. Camera
drones circled Jak and Sinda.

“ ‘Trapped’ is the word,” Jak agreed. “First of all I have a question for you. Why did you make me look like the biggest gweetz
in the solar system? Especially when there are literally hundreds of witnesses to contradict that silly story you had coming
out of my mouth? You made me look like a liar and a braggart and a complete idiot!
Why?!”

“The camera sees what the camera sees,” Sinda said. She had smiled as if dealing with a four-year-old throwing a tantrum.

Jak gaped at her, his outrage an aphasic spike pinning his jaws closed; he glanced at Dujuv, who was pretending to be fascinated
by something out the window.

“I did not say any of those things,” Jak finally managed to sputter, and somehow he sounded like a liar even to himself, even
knowing that it was perfectly true. “I didn’t say any of them. You or your accesscaster or somebody made all of that up, and
created an interview where there wasn’t one, and I want to know why. Why did you do that to me? You’ve made me out to be a
bragging lying fool and cost me the trust of many friends and I want to know why. That’s what the question is.”

Sinda shrugged. “If you didn’t want me to put it out on the nets, why did you talk to me? With that poor girl hardly cold
yet—and away from your duty station—you were right outside the hall telling me everything. Check the background of the shots
and you’ll be able to see that it must have been less than ten minutes after the assassination attempt. In fact—”

She touched her purse and said, “Cue up the lead in from the ball for the Duke of Uranium, post major event, outside the Great
Hall doors, Royal Palace, Greenworld. Project on inboard system if they’ll give you access—”

“Got the clip, got access,” her purse said. It had a very resonant baritone, like the second lead in a romantic-adventure
viv. “Here it is—projecting.”

The screen formed on a blank wall; the image was sharp and clear, as might be expected with top-of-the-line media gear, showing
the crush of celeb-watchers, people who collected sightings of the famous, just outside the main doors. The muffled thud of
the bomb, the pistol shots, and the weird veering of the slec only took half a minute before the shrieks and screaming started.
(It had seemed like forever while it was happening.) The crowd of celeb-watchers swarmed toward the doors like vampires around
a hemophiliac. Royal Palace Guards at the door were reinforced by regular troops as the concealed doors and vomitoria dilated
all over the front of the building.

A side door, barely in the frame, opened a crack, and Jak saw himself emerge, look around, look toward the camera, fix his
gaze, and run forward, waving a hand. “Mreek Sinda! Mreek Sinda! I need you to interview me right away!”

“Now, are you going to say that that didn’t happen?” Sinda demanded.

“I did not do that! I was right in there in the hall with Dujuv and Shadow and several hundred witnesses, and I didn’t leave
till hours later when Xabo officially released us. I don’t think I was ever out of sight of either of my toves here, and I
know plenty of people saw me.”

“Do you have any idea how unreliable an eyewitness is?”

“Ahem,” Shadow said. “I—er, Jak, I wish I could completely confirm your whereabouts, but as you know I was engaged in ending
threats to the Duke, and that was where all my focus was. And I rather suspect that Dujuv was in a similar situation.”

“I was,” Dujuv said.

“I couldn’t possibly have had time to slip out during the fight,” Jak said. “Remember, I tripped up the one with the bomb,
and then I was in it until you two took out the gunmen. I was never more than ten steps away from either of you. Dujuv, I
could not have run outside and done an interview, not and been right back at your side when we were dealing with poor Seubla.”

“I still don’t see why you gave an interview if you didn’t want it accesscast,” Sinda said. “But since you’re acting irrationally,
I’m going to invoke my media privileges under the safe-conduct treaties, because I don’t want to be harassed while I’m doing
my job. If you try to approach me or speak to me I’ll swear out a formal complaint. When I want another interview, I’ll talk
to you. Till then, don’t approach.”

Jak wanted to say something, but he felt his tove’s hand over his mouth. “I don’t know who’s telling the truth,” Dujuv said,
“but even if you are a liar—and you might be (I guess)—then I’d rather not have my pizo go to jail.”

The rest of the trip was uneventful; conversation was only about the occasional glimpses of interesting things in the sky,
backward glances at the Aerie, a moment when the Hive and Earth passed in near conjunction, and the distant view of the outward
bound
Serendipity of Alpha Draconis,
a Rubahy sunclipper making the long run from Mercury and Venus back to Pluto. “I have cousins aboard her,” Shadow said, “but
then there are so few of us, and we have been isolated for so long, that it is hardly possible for ten Rubahy to gather without
there being cousins present.” He stared at the bright curves and bows in the viewport, very quietly, for a long time.

Dujuv asked, “Do you wish you were on it?”

“At least four of the crew would gain great honor by assassinating me,” Shadow on the Frost said, “but if you mean, do I long
for home? Well, I long for many of the people there. Eventually these problems of honor and precedence and so on will work
out, but just now, it seems so very long until I can be out working the lines, every day for three years, upward into the
dark, feeling that every time I turn a wrench, set a dial, or read a needle, we sail a little closer to home. There is a poet
of ours who speaks of the three-year homeward journey of a Rubahy sunclipper from Mercury to Pluto.” He whistled a short passage;
it was melodic and sad, with an odd, perky lilt in the last few notes. “Translated into your words, it would be:

A year. Sol gutters to a bright star.

A year. Empty dark between steel stars.

A year. Dim snowy globe. Oaths kept. Home.

“But I am told that our poetry says nothing to you, so enough of this. I shall talk myself into depression, which is bad for
reflexes and alertness, and that in turn is bad for survival.”

“I do hope you find your way home, old tove,” Dujuv said.

As they approached the
Spirit of Singing Port,
the vast sunclipper filled almost 180 degrees of their vision. Sails, lines, and all spread for tacking, the ship was over
sixteen thousand kilometers wide at its widest point, and almost ten thousand kilometers long from its outermost tripo to
the tip of the trailing heat exchanger.

In all of that, it was hard to see the little glittering star of the one-kilometer-wide metal sphere where several thousand
crewies, men, women, and children, lived their whole lives. Solar sails are fast but not powerful, and all that vast microns-thick
spread of sail was only to drive that little ball, barely a kilometer across. The sky was filled with the sails, but the home
of twenty-five hundred crew would barely be visible until they were nearly there.

Presently the mechanical voice asked them to strap in, and they did. After some minutes the little ferry jumped sideways,
then up toward their heads, then back, a kick-boxer’s footwork. The accelerations were brief and small, not more than ten
seconds or a quarter g.

The ship proper was now a dark circle about the diameter of a pencil at arm’s length. Neither Jak’s viewport nor any of the
screens showed the ribbon of the sunclipper’s loop until they aligned. Half a minute before coupling, their seats began to
rotate and extend under them so that they could take the coming acceleration fully supported, lying on their backs.

One view camera switched to a close-up and Jak saw the linducer grapple grab the loop. The instant it closed, four g slammed
him down against the padding of his seat. He could have raised an arm only with difficulty, and breathing was a struggle.
He relaxed and let his breath woof out, knowing it wouldn’t be long.

The linducer grapple pulled mightily against the loop, which whirled halfway round the thirty-kilometer circle in less than
a minute, bringing their velocity to zero relative to the ship. The grapple let go, the acceleration stopped as if turned
off by a switch, and they floated weightlessly into the
Spirit
’s receiving dock. “Everyone on board will de-board
now,
” the automatic voice said. “Relaunch is in six minutes twenty-nine seconds, repeat six minutes twenty-nine, from
now.
Everyone off
now.
”

Jak slung his jumpie on and airswam forward through the hatch into the flextunnel to the ship’s receiving bay. In the big
airlock, a DNA reader scraped the inside of his arm and turned green when it confirmed his identity.

He airswam through the inner hatch and was wrapped in a twining human body, tumbling in midair. A hot face pressed against
his and then a warm tongue was in his mouth, thrusting deep, and the girl’s mouth against his softened and opened further
as he responded. The kiss might have gone even longer if in their tumbling Jak’s back hadn’t finally bumped against the wall,
jarring them from each other. As they came up for air, Jak looked into the familiar big dark eyes with a slight epicanthic
fold, and the delicate features in soft cocoa skin framed by short coppery hair. “Well, hi, there, Phrysaba.”

“ ‘Well, hi, there.’ What do I have to do to get some enthusiasm? Eat your head?” Her eyes were twinkling with pleasure. She
still had a smile that could grab Jak by the heart and squeeze till he thought it might pop.

Jak became aware that something was buzzing around him in a cloud—Mreek Sinda’s drones were swirling around them. One was
shooting a close-up of Phrysaba’s breast, three of her buttocks. Beyond the tiny flying cameras, he saw Dujuv laughing madly
and hanging on to Shadow, who was making the resonant bloop-and-tang noise that was Rubahy laughter.

He looked a little to the side, where something else was moving; it was Phrysaba’s brother, Piaro, Jak’s oldest tove on the
ship, and beside him, Pabrino Prudent-Reckoner, a brilliant younger heet of whom Jak was very fond, and who seemed to have
grown about a head in height since Jak had seen him last. Piaro was grinning broadly and said, “I hope you won’t expect everyone
to welcome you the way my sister does.” Pabrino smiled at that, but seemed quiet and thoughtful.

Then Mreek Sinda loudly said, “So how does this affect your relationship with Her Utmost Grace Shyf?”

Jak looked very, very seriously at the camera nearest him and said, with undisguised deep passion,

Mary had a little duck,

She kept it in her bed,

And everyone—

Sinda made an annoyed noise; the drones flitted back into her bag as she demanded that someone show her the way to her stateroom.