Gravity Dreams

'You come here a lot, don't you?' asked the young woman. 'You always sit alone.' Her eyes were open wide, a deep guileless brown, under an unlined brow. Her sandy hair was short, and she had small ears with almost no lobes.

Her narrow face angled from high fine cheekbones to a gently pointed chin. Her lips were almost too full for the elfin face.

'I'm too tired to go far,' I said, accepting the flattery of her approach and glad for company for at least a time. 'Would you like to join me?'

'Are you sure? I wouldn't want ... I mean ... you must have a lot to do.'

'Not at the moment.' I paused. 'What would you like?'

'Oh ... I can get it myself.'

I stepped back, careful not to brush against her, especially since her red-cuffed silver singlesuit was somewhat more than formfitting.

After a minute or so, the reformulator blinked. She slipped what looked to be a beer and a plate of noodles and sauce onto a tray. I smiled and gestured toward the table, then followed her, standing until she sat. I eased the tray back onto the table and glanced outside.

The light across the water had become more golden, not quite sunset but getting close.

'It's pretty here. Sometimes, I just sit and watch as the sun goes down.' She turned in her chair and faced me. 'I'm Aleyaisha. I work in the medical section for doctor Bekunin.'

Bekunin - the name was familiar, but I couldn't recall why. 'I'm Tyndel. I'm a trainee of sorts.'

'You're going to be a needle pilot, aren't you?' The eyes widened more as she looked directly at me. 'I mean ... you wear the light green, and no one else besides ...' As her words trailed off, she moistened her lips.

'I'm trying.' I gave a soft laugh. 'That's up to other powers.' She wasn't that guileless, and yet she was somehow embarrassed. I wondered why.

Aleyaisha nodded, then twirled the pasta deftly around a fork and cut it with the side of a large spoon. She ate neatly, and not a dab of the cream sauce strayed from the pasta or her mouth.

Two women walked past on their way to the formulator. One was thin-faced and black-haired, with pinched lips, the other brunette and more ample. Both wore silver with full red sleeves. The brunette swayed as she walked. The thin-faced one glanced at Aleyaisha and gave the faintest of headshakes.

'Do you think you'll like being in space?' Aleyaisha asked as though she hadn't seen the disgusted look offered by the thin-faced woman, and she might not have.

'I've been there. I was a low-technician on an outspace orbit station for a while.' I took a mouthful of chilied crayfish.

'You were? What was that like?'

Again, I had the feeling that she knew more than she was saying, but a gust of warm air swept over us as two men entered the lounge, glancing around.

The taller man's eyes spotted the women who had come in earlier. 'They're over there, Haifez.'

'... could have waited for us ...' Haifez snorted.

The taller man, fresh-faced and in maroon, a color I hadn't seen before in a singlesuit, passed us on his way toward the pair at the table.

'... know her,' murmured Haifez. 'Works in medical ... wouldn't even look at me.'

'That's the way it goes ... candidate, not even a needle jock yet, and they're hanging on him.'

I tried not to flush at the taller man's comment.

'He wasn't very interesting.' Aleyaisha smiled at me. 'Do you have a lot of other women who hang on you?'

'I don't think anyone hangs on me,' I admitted. 'No one that I know.'

'Look!' Aleyaisha's whisper was intense, and I followed her finger.

A great blue heron had swooped down to stand, first on two feet, then one, in the shallows beyond the mangrove spit. So still he might have been a statue, the heron waited. The light flooding across the marsh lake from the west grew more orange-golden, and the heron remained motionless. The shadow cast by the lounge inched across the water toward the mangroves.

Flick! The heron's bill stabbed and came up. Impaled on it was a shimmering sliver of silver that twitched once before the heron gulped it down.

'You see why I like it at this time of day?' Aleyaisha smiled impishly.

Since I was chewing crayfish, I nodded.

'There's always something. Last winter, when there was ice on the edge of the water, I saw a pair of black swans. They had red bills.'

Last winter I had been... where? OE Station? Or had I lost the end of winter to the time dilation of overspace travel? 'Do you think they'll return?'

'They might. I'd like to see them again.' She took a small sip of the dark beer, then a second.

The two couples at the table farthest from us laughed, loudly, and I hoped the sound didn't carry beyond the permaglass and send the heron flying.

'... birds ... get him with birds.'

'Why not? He's another kind of bird ... flies the overspace ... think they're little engees ... most do.'

I winced.

'Don't listen to them,' Aleyaisha suggested. 'They're jealous.'

All of them?'

'The women wish they had the nerve to talk to you. The men are angry because you can do things they can't.'

'Everyone can do something unique.' I sipped the last of the second mug of Arleen.

'There aren't many needle pilots.'

'How many are there?' I wondered if she knew or would tell me.

'According to the medical records, right now there are ninety-three active needle pilots. There are four they could recall'

'Ninety-three?' I couldn't believe that. The Rykashans had almost two dozen outspace colonies or stations serving planets being planoformed into something habitable. Then I wondered how she knew.

'You'll be the ninety-fifth if no one goes off active status. There's one in flight training at Orbit Station.'

I frowned. I suppose I could have tracked the information - or maybe I couldn't have - but the thought that there were so few had never occurred to me. 'Is that because we don't need any more?'

Aleyaisha shook her head. 'The skills are rare.'

Rare? How rare? Rare enough to justify structuring a death to coerce me? I felt small at the thought, knowing that was something none of the Rykashans I had met would do. For a time, I sat there. The four in the corner rose and left, and shadows covered the water outside, all the way to the mangroves.

She finally broke the stillness. 'They say you were a Dzin master. Is that true?'

'I studied Dzin and might have been a master, in time.' I thought about the words and added. 'I thought so then. Now, I don't know.'

'You would have been.'

'I don't know.'

I knew I could have invited her back to my quarters.

Although holding and touching her would have warmed an empty evening, whenever she had left, both the evening - or morning - and I would have been far emptier. Emptier than the darkness around OE Station or than my soul on the day when I had fled Hybra.

She wanted something, not an image, but perhaps to console me, and I wanted to be consoled - but not out of pity. It had to be out of honesty, and the only ones who could have done that were Foerga and Fersonne ... and Cerrelle, except she wouldn't have wanted to, and I couldn't blame her.

Honesty demanded that I be more than an image, more than an image to myself. So I smiled. 'I'm glad you wanted to talk. Maybe ... another time.'

She smiled back, not quite sadly. 'Another time.'

We walked in different directions, and I stayed up later than I should have, poring over Andra's supplemental readings, readings that never quite answered as many questions as they raised, occasionally half wondering about why Aleyaisha had really sought me out, but not sure I wanted to look that deeply.