Superluminal by Vonda N. McIntyre Read Free Book Online

champagne. People clustered around her, waiting for her to talk. She found
that she had no more to say to them than to those she left behind in the crew.
She smiled, doubting that the expression masked her unease.
    A man came up to her and shook her hand. “I’ve
always wanted to meet an Aztec…”
    His voice trailed off at Laenea’s frown. She did not
want to be churlish, so she put aside her annoyance. “Just
‘pilot,’ please.”
    “But Aztecs —”
    “The Aztecs sacrificed their captives’
hearts,” Laenea said. “We aren’t captives, and we certainly
don’t feel we’ve made a sacrifice.”
    She turned away, ending the conversation before he could
press forward with a witty comment. Laenea shivered and wished away the dense
crowd of rich, free, trapped human beings. She wanted quiet and solitude.
    Suddenly Radu was near. Laenea grasped his outstretched
hand. He said something to Kathell, which the ringing in Laenea’s ears
blocked out. Kathell nodded and led the way through the crowd. The guests
parted like water for Kathell. For Kathell and her tiger, but Kathell was in
front. Laenea and Radu followed in her wake. They moved through regions of
fragrances: mint, carnation, pine, musk, orange blossom. The boundaries were
sharp between the odors.
    They entered the pavilion. Radu pulled the front flap closed
before anyone else could follow. Laenea immediately felt warmer. The
temperature was probably the same outside in the open party, but the luminous
tent walls made her feel enclosed and protected from the cold vast currents of
the sea.
    She sat gratefully in a soft chair. The white tiger laid his
chin on her knee and she stroked his huge head.
    Kathell took the empty champagne glass and gave Laenea a
different drink. Laenea sipped it: warm milk punch. A hint that she should be
in bed.
    “I just got out of the hospital,” she said.
“I guess I overdid it a little. I’m not used to —” She
gestured with her free hand, meaning: everything. My new body, being outside
and free again, Radu. Her vision began to blur, so she closed her eyes.
    “Stay awhile,” Kathell said.
    Laenea did not try to answer; she was too comfortable, too
sleepy. She slowed her heart and relaxed the arterial constricting muscles.
Blood flowing through the dilated capillaries made her blush, and she felt
warmer.
    Laenea thought Kathell said more, but the words drowned in
the murmur of muffled voices, wind, and sea. She felt only the softness of the
cushions beneath her, the warm fragrant air, and the fur of the white tiger.
    Time passed, how much or at what rate Laenea had no idea.
She slept gratefully and unafraid, deeply, dreaming, and hardly roused when she
was moved. She muttered something and was reassured, but never remembered the
words, only the tone. Wind and cold touched her and were shut out. She felt a
slight acceleration. Then she slept again.
    o0o
    Orca felt tired after the long swim from Harmony to the
spaceport. She swam into the ferry dock, pausing where water and air and the
metal ramp intersected. The air world began to come back to her. Her metabolism
slowed and she felt chilly. She never noticed the cold, deep in the sea.
    She stood and shook the water from her short, pale hair. She
had arrived just ahead of a ferry. Its sails furled softly and its hull sighed
as it settled lower in the water. Orca hurried toward the deck. Swimmers, even
divers, were not supposed to come on board this way, but her people used the
pier as if it had been built for them. They stayed out of the way of arriving
and departing ferries, but that was only common sense.
    Whenever the port authorities roused themselves to complain,
the divers’ council renewed its application to build an underwater
hatchway in their quarters in the stabilizer shaft. The fight over the permits
had been going on for years. For herself, Orca ignored the dispute and came on
board whatever way was most convenient at the time, whether it was ferry dock
or