Godspeed (42 page)

I have reasons, even if no one else accepts them—or cares.

The ship that we found with the Slowdrive was simple enough to pilot: far easier than the
Cuchulain,
even before that became a dying hulk. On the other hand, Jim Swift's conviction about what had happened to Shaker and his crew made both him and Doctor Eileen nervous and supercautious. They were not about to climb into an unfamiliar ship and cheerily let me switch on the power. Jim wanted to
understand
the Slowdrive, before we tried to go to Erin or anywhere else.

He started studying, filling pages with diagrams and equations and loading endless files of data in and out of the navaid and the ship's computer. He was having a great time, and the rest of us were going out of our minds, because Jim would offer no opinion as to how long it might be before he was satisfied that the drive was safe.

Mel and I visited the Godspace chamber half a dozen times in the next three days. Twice Doctor Eileen went with us, but she quickly became impatient and left. Even Mel refused to go with me eventually. Everything in the Godspace was so
slow,
she said, it was like trying to watch the stars move. She couldn't stand it. Worse than that, Godspace stretched time. We would spend hours and hours there, but find when we returned to the ship that only a couple of minutes had gone by. Jim Swift would still be halfway through the same sandwich, or staring vacantly at the same knob as when we left.

As a result I made my final visits to Godspace alone. And it was not until the very end that I observed the change.

Every previous visit had been the same: a giant, insubstantial crew drifting slowly around the shadowy cabin, or sitting at an oval table talking and gesturing to each other in five-minute arm movements. It was consistent with Jim Swift's assertion, that I was seeing no more than a dying record of the moments before the Godspeed drive was turned on and the ship and crew vanished together into nonexistence.

This last time I entered the great chamber and took the usual few minutes, adjusting to the strange light and the distorted scale of things. The difference now was that
everyone,
including Danny Shaker, was sitting down. It took me a little while to realize what they were doing. Then I dived for the grey membrane, emerged into the corridor, and hurried at top speed back to the Slowdrive ship.

"What's the panic?" Jim Swift had cleared away his mess of drawings and calculations from the control panel, and he seemed in high good humor.

"The Godspace chamber. You have to see it."

"For a last look, you mean, before we leave for Erin?" He laughed at my double take. "You heard me, Jay. We're going home. And more than home, because I finally have the whole picture. The Slowdrive
is
slow—compared with the Godspeed Drive. But it's still superluminal, four or five times lightspeed. We've got a shot at the stars again. The Slowdrive doesn't create vacuum distortion, either. It won't throw us right out of this universe."

"Nor does the Godspeed Drive." I saw his raised eyebrows. "Come and look, Jim, you have to see this for yourself. I don't know what the Godspeed Drive did to space-time when the Isolation happened, but it's different now. Space-time repaired itself. The drive is working again."

I led the way to the Godspace chamber at top speed, and dived through with Jim close behind me.

"There you are," I said. "It takes a minute to get used to things, but see for yourself."

He squinted at the monstrous body shapes, like towering smoke outlines in the great spherical chamber. "See what?"

"Can't you tell what they're doing?"

There was a long pause, while Jim studied slow-lifting arms and gaping mouths in remote, indistinct faces. "I can't be sure. But it seems to me that they're eating and drinking."

"That's right. They're in the middle of a meal. Don't you see what that means?"

He didn't. "You drag me in here," he said in a rising tone, "when I have us almost ready to go home—just to show me a bunch of people
eating?
"

"You don't understand. You told me that what I've been seeing here is an echo of what happened
before
the Godspeed Drive was turned on. That once the drive operated, they vanished."

"That's right. They disappeared from our universe."

"But they're
eating.
"

"Jay, people still became hungry—even when they were getting ready to use the Godspeed Drive. It was their last meal, but they didn't know it."

Jim had spent as much time in space as I had. And he didn't understand spacers, not one little bit.

"They'd
never
sit down for a meal," I protested. "Not just before a ship's departure. Not even if it were a ship that they'd known for years, like the
Cuchulain.
Certainly not on a new ship. What we're seeing happened
after
the drive had been turned on, when they were sure that everything was going well. The drive didn't cut them off from the universe—the Godspace chamber is still in contact with them."

"That's nonsense. The crew were hungry when they went aboard the Godspeed ship. What makes you think you know what they would do?"

Because I think like a spacer, and you won't ever.
It would have caused nothing but trouble to say that. "Even if they wanted to sit down for a meal with the Godspeed Drive all ready to fire, that would never happen with Danny Shaker as the boss. He would never have permitted it."

Jim Swift's face was hard to see behind the visor, but his actions were enough. He turned abruptly away and headed for the grey membrane of the exit. "Danny Shaker, Danny Shaker," he shouted, just before he entered it. "That's all we hear from you. You worship that man, he's addled your brain. Can't you see that he was no more than a ruthless savage? Yes, and an incompetent, too. He led the crew to their doom, and his own. Don't waste any more of my time with him."

Jim was going off into one of his rages. It was pointless to argue. I stayed in the chamber for a long time after he had left, trying the impossible task of reading Danny Shaker's expression. That had been beyond me, even face to face aboard the
Cuchulain.
The satisfaction that I read there now was probably all my imagination.

When I returned to the Slowdrive ship no one was interested to hear a single word about Danny Shaker, the crew of the
Cuchulain,
or the Godspace chamber. All that Mel and Doctor Eileen cared about was the Slowdrive. They had become as much monomaniacs as Jim Swift. It was Erin, Erin, Erin. They wanted to fly to Erin, as soon as possible.

And finally, fly to Erin we did.

* * *

After all the dangers and difficulties that we had met on the way out, the journey home was pure anticlimax. The ship's controls had been designed to be operated by an idiot (or, as I told myself, by a Jim Swift-like research scientist). At Doctor Eileen's insistence, I held the Slowdrive to its lowest power level. Even so, we snaked our way from the depths of the Maze to Muldoon Upside Port in little more than two days.

Anyone of us who expected excitement at our return to Erin would have been disappointed. I had forgotten the extent to which the Downsiders were wrapped up in their ground-level affairs. Our arrival was greeted with massive indifference. You found a space base? Then go and bring something useful from it, something we can use on Erin. A new drive, you say? We already have ships that can explore the Forty Worlds. A female visitor from the Maze? Don't try to fool us, you took her with you from Erin.

The most interesting response at the end of our trip came not from Erin, but from Doctor Eileen during final arrival. We were together in the control room, just before she and Jim Swift transferred to a ferry ship for Muldoon Downside. Mel and I would follow them down later.

I complained about my husky voice. It had been hoarse and hard to control since we left
Paddy's Fortune.

"Can you give me anything for it?" I asked.

Doctor Eileen burst out laughing, something she did about once a year. "Not one thing, Jay. Any more than I can do anything for Mel. Maybe you ought to discuss it with her. She's been complaining, too."

And with that baffling comment she was off to the ferry.

* * *

Last night I dreamed about Danny Shaker.
The two-half-man, face invisible, arms crossed, massaging the red line of scar across his biceps. In my dream he was talking to my mother, telling her of his hopes and plans for me. She was smiling and nodding, and speaking to him like a close friend in the breathless, throaty voice that I remembered from as long ago as I remembered anything. I could tell that she
really
liked him.

* * *

That is where I ought to end my story; because tomorrow we leave for
Paddy's Fortune.
Mel can't wait to lord it over the stay-at-home girls she left behind, Jim Swift wants to meet the controller, and Doctor Eileen is keen to study the local plant and animal life.

We expect to be there for perhaps two weeks. After that we will take the next big step. Not the stars—not yet, although the Slowdrive should certainly be capable of it. We will content ourselves with a trial run, out to the far reaches of the Maveen system. On the way, Jim Swift wants to take another look at the Luimneach Anomaly. After visiting the Eye, he's not convinced that the Luimneach is as empty as it is assumed to be.

But the stars are waiting, and we can't ignore them forever. Someday, before very long, we will try the long journey out. Are there other planets and other people waiting and watching the skies, or searching to find a hidden Godspeed Base, or discovering their own version of the Slowdrive?

I know of only one way to find out. And I can't help wondering. If and when we reach the nearest star, what we will find? Dead worlds, fading empires, great living civilizations. And might we find that Danny Shaker and his crew have been before us?

That thought should blow me away. In most ways it does, but it does not dominate my mind as it would have a week ago, because this morning I finally acted on Doctor Eileen's suggestion. I complained to Mel about my hoarse voice.

"You really don't know what's been happening to you?" she said. She was facing half away, but she kept darting me rapid little glances from the corner of her eye.

"My voice—"

"Your voice, and the hair on your chin, and your chest. And your
moustache.
And you've
grown
about four inches."

"Well, you've grown too. And
you
—"

She had changed, more than I. She had a different shape, and her walk had become a woman's walk. Anyone who mistook her for a boy now would have to be blind.

"
You've
changed," I said.

"Of course I have." She finally turned to face me. "For exactly the same reason. Doctor Eileen explained it to me. But I don't think it's fair to expect me to explain it to
you.
"

And she wouldn't, not one word. I had to wait until I had another meeting alone with Doctor Eileen.

"Good Lord, of
course
Mel wouldn't talk to you," she said. "I was joking—I didn't expect that you would
ask
her. Sit down, Jay."

I did, wondering what came next. Doctor Eileen stood close, studied my face, and nodded.

"Do you remember that you said the food on
Paddy's Fortune
tasted strange, and Mel said the same thing about the food on the
Cuchulain?
And the controller on
Paddy's Fortune
gave you a box of pills?"

"Sure. But I thought they were diet supplements."

"They were. You see, the food we grow on Erin isn't quite right for humans. It's deficient in certain trace compounds. I've known that for a long time. And funnily enough, the food on
Paddy's Fortune
isn't quite right, either, but in a different way.
Together,
though, they can provide everything you need. Which they did—for you and Mel.

"There's nothing unusual about what's been happening to either of you, except the speed of it. You both had delayed puberty. Now you're rushing through the physical changes in about a tenth of the usual time. It's bound to make you uncomfortable. But it's all normal." She nodded at me and started for the door. "Don't worry about it."

Easy enough for
her
to say—it wasn't happening to Doctor Eileen.

I went through into the bathroom and stared in the mirror at my face. It wasn't just hairy. It was spotty as well, and looked different in other ways. The bones of my cheeks and forehead were more prominent, and my eyes sat deeper in my head. I wondered what my mother would make of the new me. She was heading for Upside, anxious to see me before we left and make sure that I was all right. She was in for a bit of a shock.

I was still gazing at my reflection when Mel came in and stood behind me.

"I just talked to Doctor Eileen," I said. I stared at her, but only in the mirror. I couldn't bring myself to turn around.

"I know." Mel's face was pink. "She told me. And she told me to come and talk to you. I want to say one thing. Just don't you."

"Just don't I
what?
"

"Don't you get any ideas.
Funny
ideas. That's all." And she was gone, without a word more. The strange thing is, there had been nothing like that in my head until she spoke.

But there is now, and I wonder if she did it on purpose. If she did, it worked.

I have no idea what the trip to
Paddy's Fortune
and beyond will be like. I don't know what will happen when we make the long run, and rediscover the stars. I don't know if my wildest fear—and, perhaps, my oddest hope and dream—will come true, and one day, far off in space and time, I will meet again with Danny Shaker.

But I do know that things inside me are changing—fast. And I can't keep my head clear of notions that have nothing to do with the Godspeed Drive or interstellar exploration.