Across the Spectrum (39 page)

He swung the collapsed wing pack to the floor. “And I’ve
been flying for five years now—this was just to get a feel for doing it in a
real place, instead of a fantasy landscape.”

“I can tell,” she said. “Your shoulders and chest are as big
as any of the fledgies’ in Aramapriya, where I grew up.” Mari shook her head.
“But you’re a downsider, and so is Flugel. He—” She broke off politely as Taj’s
boswell beeped. He looked down at the little datalink on his wrist and gasped.

“Gonna be late; my S’lift pod climbs in thirty minutes.” He
picked up his wings and ran out. Mari called out after him, but the echoes from
the interior of the sim muffled her voice, and all he heard was a single word.

It sounded like “Suraki.”

Somebody’s name?

Taj barely made it to the transtube in time: the doors
squawked a warning at him as he flung himself into the transport. As it
accelerated toward the S’lift, the immense cable that reached all the way from
Sundara’s surface to the ring of highdwellings in orbit forty thousand
kilometers above, Taj mulled over Mari’s reaction, struggling with an odd knot
of emotions.

Your shoulders and chest are as big as any of the
fledgies’ in Aramapriya . . .
She’d said “fledgie”—a real
flyer—instead of “eyaz”—someone yet to make their first flight. And the
admiration in her voice had been a welcome change from his schoolmates’
teasing. It was bad enough that he was from a family newly raised to the Douloi
aristocracy. What really set him apart were the wide shoulders and deep chest
that the intense effort of flying had given him: the very opposite of the
slender physique considered fashionable. But Mari didn’t mind that at all.

Then he remembered her next words.

But you’re a downsider . . .
Her tone
then had definitely not been admiring. His stomach twisted—how would people
treat him up on Talajara? One reason he was looking forward to his visit to one
of the highdwellings was that there a flyer was not a freak. But was being a
downsider up there even worse than being a flyer down below?

When he got to the terminal, Taj grabbed his wing pack and
ran to the waiting lift, which deposited him outside the towering S’lift pod
just before its doors hissed shut. The steward’s voice was already droning
through the usual emergency procedures as he found his seat.

“. . . accelerating at one-tenth gee for
approximately forty minutes, during which time you will feel a bit heavier than
normal . . .”

The pod lifted with an almost imperceptible shudder,
climbing so slowly that it was almost a minute before the roof of the terminal
finally cut off the sight of the crowded concourse.

But he hardly noticed. Would Gee-Em, his mysterious
benefactor, really sponsor him to the Naval Academy on far-off Minerva, halfway
across the Thousand Suns?

He’d never met Gee-Em, or not that he could remember, but he
knew that her attendance at his name-day ritual a month after his birth had
caused a sensation. Nullers—those rare humans able to adapt to permanent life
in the weightlessness of null-gee—almost never descended to the surface of a
planet. The centuries-long lifespan bestowed by null-gee—Gee-Em herself was
over 350 years old—was too precious to risk: if the geebubble that kept them
weightless failed, it would mean a swift and agonizing death in the crushing
grip of planetary gravity.

Taj had no idea why she’d picked him out, alone of all her
descendants in his generation. Her trust fund had financed his education and
his flying, and now she had summoned him without explanation to her home up in
Talajara.

The thought reminded him of her invitation, written in
spidery handwriting on stiff, creamy paper, after the fashion favored by the
Douloi for intimate communications.

. . . and I suggest that you view the orientation vid with
great care on the way up, for life on a highdwelling is far different from what
you have known.

At his touch a viewscreen extruded from the seat back in
front of him. He selected the orientation and settled back to watch. At first
the images of the highdwelling held his attention. It was a vast cylinder
spinning about its long axis to create gravity. People lived on the inner
surface in elegant buildings set amongst trees and greenery, and Taj found the
idea of an inside-out world both beautiful and strange. But soon he was
distracted by the breathtaking panorama out the viewport. The horizon curved
off below a deep violet sky as the cloud-swirled surface of Sundara fell
swiftly away.

“. . . The fact that gravity on a
highdwelling is furnished by rotation rather than mass or a gravitor has some
interesting consequences. For instance, ‘light’ objects actually fall faster
than ‘heavy’ ones.”

Startled, Taj looked back at the screen, where a cartoon
figure tossed a huge lump of orange foam off a platform with a flick of its
wrists, then labored mightily to roll a small metal sphere off the edge after
it.

“If you push equal masses of dyplast foam and lead away from
the spin axis, where they are both weightless, the foam falls faster—that is,
it falls along a shorter path and thus reaches the inner surface far sooner
than the lead.” On the screen, the foam fell faster and faster as it descended,
while the lead ball seemed to float lazily through the air.

“This is because the air within the highdwelling, which is,
of course, rotating along with everything else, easily accelerates the lighter
foam up to the rate of rotation so that it is immediately subject to
spin-gravity. The heavier lead, on the other hand, is almost unaffected by the
rotational wind, so it isn’t subject to the highdwelling’s spin-gravity. It
falls in a long spiral and hits the surface long after the lighter foam.

“The difference is further exaggerated by the fact that the
farther an object is from the spin axis—the lower it is—the heavier it gets,
and the change with altitude is much greater than on a planet or in a
gravitor-equipped habitat. This explains why the myth of Icarus, so familiar to
downsiders, is—”

Taj grimaced and tabbed the vid off. That was the nickname
the other students had stuck him with—Icky. It was a stupid story, anyway—a boy
flying on wings made of wax and feathers that melted from the sun’s heat when
he flew too high. Everyone knew you couldn’t fly like that on a planet—people
were too heavy.

“This mudfoot vid is boring,” said a boy behind him.

“It’s eight hours to the Node,” replied a girl, whose voice
sent a shiver of delight through Taj and pulled him out of his thoughts. “What
do you want to do?”

“Let’s go up to the salon and see what kind of games they’ve
got.”

As they passed, she glanced at Taj and smiled briefly, and
he saw that she was, if possible, even prettier than her voice: long, straight
dark hair, high cheekbones, and a perfect dark olive high-caste complexion.

Taj hesitated. They were obviously highdwellers—the
reference to the vid as “mudfoot” in origin proved that. Even more daunting,
their singsong voices identified them as High Douloi. Social convention was
strict: they would have to make the first move toward acquaintance. Any
overture on his part would doubtless be greeted with the freezing formality
he’d encountered all too often from his schoolmates.

But the boy with her seemed to have a flyer’s build, so
evidently downsider Douloi fashions didn’t hold in orbit. And Taj remembered
how she’d smiled at him—with more than just her mouth, he thought.

The sound of laughter drifting down from the salon, mixed
with the faint blaring of a simgame, decided him. He stood up, hesitated a
moment, then took his wing pack with him.

His heart pounding, Taj climbed the stairs, emerging into a
luxuriously carpeted cabin crowded with young people. An especially animated
knot of them was gathered around a low console, across which a tall boy and a
girl with a stiff shock of bright blue hair faced each other, tapping
frantically at the keypads to a mixture of musical and explosive noises. It
sounded comfortably familiar.

Taj awkwardly pushed his way to the front of the crowd,
impeded by his wing pack, and verified his suspicion: they were playing
Acheront, a vidgame based on the famous space battle that had ended the war
with Dol’jhar. He’d trained many times in the official Academy sim of that
battle.

He watched with growing impatience as the boy conning the
frigate Tirane maneuvered it timidly from asteroid to asteroid, creeping up on
the crippled Dol’jharian flagship. In the real battle, Ensign Margot O’Reilly
Ng had boldly charged the Blood of Dol and captured the avatar while the ship’s
ruptors were off line.

But the boy’s cautious play earned him a very different
reward: The other player crowed with triumph as her battlecruiser’s ruptors
suddenly powered up and discharged. Vicious pulses of gravitational energy tore
into the little frigate, disintegrating it in a blare of light.

Taj groaned in disgust. The loser looked up; he was the
pretty girl’s companion. In fact, she was standing right behind him.

“You think you could do better?” he asked, his singsong
accent diminished by the anger in his voice.

Taj thought he saw a glimmer of encouragement in the girl’s
eyes. Emboldened, he stepped up to the console.

“Sure,” he replied.

The blue-haired girl yielded her seat with a sidelong
glance.

Across the simgame console the loser eyed Taj’s wing pack.
“Where are you from?” he asked as he reset the game, his High Douloi accent
returning.

“Vishnara.”

“A downsider. What’re you doing with a wing pack?”

“I’m going up to Talajara to fly.”

“We’re from Talajara,” said the girl. “I’m Amavira.” She
touched the shoulder of the boy in front of her. “This is my brother,
Naramutro.”

“Tajarivani,” Taj said in response. Then, not allowing time
for a possible snub, he added a note of informality: “Taj.”

She smiled. “Ama.”

Taj abruptly felt very light. He smiled back.

But Naramutro just nodded, not offering a nickname, and
motioned at the simgame console. “Your choice.”

A thrill ran through Taj. Naramutro was treating this like a
formal duel.

He glanced past his opponent, out the viewport. The sky was
black now as the S’lift pod climbed toward space. Above, the bright arch of the
ring of highdwellings about the planet formed a vivid stroke of light over the
curve of Sundara’s horizon.

Taj suddenly realized that the S’lift was not only carrying
him into orbit, it was also carrying him away from his old identity. Up here no
one knew him; he didn’t have to be “Icky” anymore.

With a boldness he’d formerly reserved for the battlesims he
replied, “Random.”

Naramutro’s lips tightened as a whispered current of
excitement ran through the others. The girl who’d just beaten Naramutro
suppressed a laugh. Taj had thrown away his advantage by letting the simgame
choose any of the millions of scenarios stored in its memory. In effect, he’d
just announced that he could beat Naramutro at any game.

And he proved it. The simgame windowed up a duel between
battlecruisers in a dense asteroid belt. Within fifteen minutes Taj had
maneuvered behind Naramutro’s cruiser and delivered a crippling blow to his
opponent’s radiants, a notable weak spot in those otherwise almost invulnerable
ships. Before Taj could launch a second hypermissile to finish him off,
Naramutro slapped the concede tab and sat back, his face dark with anger.

“You worked the sims pretty hard downside, didn’t you?” The
High Douloi’s voice was almost a snarl. Before Taj could reply the other boy
went on. “I suppose that’s how you learned to fly, too.”

“Sort of hard to fly downside, otherwise,” said the girl
with the shock of blue hair. She grinned at Taj.

Naramutro stood up. “It takes more than simtime to make a
fledgie from an eyaz. Not that you’re likely to find out.” He turned to Ama.
“Come on, Ama. The air’s a bit thick in here.”

Taj flushed at the slighting reference to his downsider
origins—the atmosphere on most of the highdwellings was thinner than Sundara’s.

Ama shook her head. “You go on, Nara; I think I’ll play a
few games.”

Naramutro stared at her for a moment, then turned and walked
out, his gait stiff.

The others crowded around Taj, congratulating him on his
victory and offering introductions at a speed that taxed his memory.

“You’ve got problems with Nara,” said Elli, the blue-haired
girl. “He’s the cadet master of the aerie in Talajara, and he’s sure to hand
you the black feather.”

“I’ve got a red feather already,” said Taj.

Elli’s brow knitted in doubt and Ama said, “It may not be
enough; our uncle is the temenarch of Talajara.”

But then her eyes widened as Taj, feeling doubtful himself,
pulled his aerie pass out of a pocket and held it out on the palm of his hand.
It was just a piece of red dyplast, shaped like a small feather, with an
embedded datachip; but on it was inlaid a gold circle with two wings.

Elli burst into laughter. “I’d like to see Nara
black-feather this one. That’s Gee-Em’s sigil!”

“She’s my greatmother in the twelfth generation,” explained
Taj. “I’m visiting her on Talajara.”

“Then we’re cousins,” said Ama. Perhaps a bit of Taj’s
disappointment showed, for she added—with just the hint of a wink, he was
sure—“In the fourth degree. Distant cousins.”

“What kind of wings are those?” interrupted Tulli, a
Talajaran boy with a square face and stocky build.

“Jihari Apodines. They’re modeled after the swifts brought
by the Exiles from Lost Earth.”

Ama looked at the wing pack longingly. “My parents won’t let
me fly sport; I have to use an old set of Creswill Diomedes. Just once I’d like
to do more than just soar.”

“They don’t want you to lose your figure,” said Elli. Taj
heard a mixture of envy and challenge in her voice. He noticed for the first
time that the blue-haired girl had the wide shoulders of a flyer who used
highly maneuverable wings like his, in contrast to Ama’s willowy frame.