Zima Blue and Other Stories by Alastair Reynolds Read Free Book Online Page B

own machinery. Furthermore, they can almost always guarantee that the desired routing is the one that the aperture machinery will provide.

    In short, you usually get where you want to go.

    Take a simple point-to-point transfer, like the Hauraki run. In that case there is no real disadvantage in using automatic syntax generators. But for longer trajectories - those that may involve six or seven transits between aperture hubs - machines lose the edge. They find a solution, but usually it isn't the optimum one. That's where syntax runners come in. People like Suzy have an intuitive grasp of syntax solutions. They dream in runes. When they see a poorly constructed script, they feel it like toothache. It affronts them.

    A good syntax runner can shave days off a route. For a company like Ashanti Industrial, that can make a lot of difference.

    But I wasn't a syntax runner. I could tell when something had gone wrong with the platelets, but I had to trust that Suzy had done her job. I had no other choice.

    But I knew Suzy wouldn't screw things up.

    I twisted around and looked back the other way. Now that we were in space, the q-planes had deployed. They were swung out from the hull on triple hundred-metre-long jibs, like the arms of a grapple. I checked that they were locked in their fully extended positions and that the status lights were all in the green. The jibs were Ray's area. He'd been checking the alignment of the ski-shaped q-planes when I ordered him to close up ship and prepare to lift. I couldn't see any visible indication that they were out of alignment, but then again it wouldn't take much to make our trip home bumpier than usual. But as I'd told Ray, who cared? The Blue Goose could take a little tunnel turbulence. It was built to.

    I checked the surge point again. Only three ships ahead of us.

    I went back to the surge tanks and checked that Suzy and Ray were all right. Ray's tank had been customised at the same time that Suzy had had hers done. It was covered with images of what Suzy called the BVM: the Blessed Virgin Mary. The BVM was always in a spacesuit, carrying a little spacesuited Jesus. Their helmets were airbrushed gold halos. The artwork had a cheap, hasty look to it. I assumed Ray hadn't spent as much as Suzy.

    Quickly I stripped down to my underclothes. I plumbed into my own unpainted surge tank and closed the lid. The buffering gel sloshed in. Within about twenty seconds I was already feeling drowsy. By the time traffic control gave us the green light I'd be asleep.

    I've done it a thousand times. There was no fear, no apprehension. Just a tiny flicker of regret.

    I've never seen an aperture. Then again, very few people have.

    Witnesses report a doughnut-shaped lump of dark chondrite asteroid, about two kilometres across. The entire middle section has been cored out, with the inner part of the ring faced by the quixotic-matter machinery of the aperture itself. They say the q-matter machinery twinkles and moves all the while, like the ticking innards of a very complicated clock. But the monitoring systems of the Aperture Authority detect no movement at all.

    It's alien technology. We have no idea how it works, or even who made it. Maybe, in hindsight, it's better not to be able to see it.

    It's enough to dream, and then awake, and know that you're somewhere else.

    Try a different approach, Greta says. Tell her the truth this time. Maybe she'll take it easier than you think.

    'There's no way I can tell her the truth.'

    Greta leans one hip against the wall, one hand still in her pocket. 'Then tell her something halfway truthful.'

    We un-plumb Suzy and haul her out of the surge tank.

    'Where are we?' she asks. Then to Greta: 'Who are you?'

    I wonder if some of the last conversation did make it out of Suzy's short-term memory after all.

    'Greta works here,' I say.

    'Where's here?'

    I remember what Greta told me. 'A station in Schedar Sector.'

    'That's not where we're meant to be,