Alex reached toward it, greedily, already feeling his tension ease, the gaping abyss that cut across his soul drawing together and diminishing.
“Touch me!”
“Be one with me!”
“Love me!”
The rainbow flared up around him.
Faithful, selflessly devoted, it took him in gently but firmly, wrapping him in an invisible embrace….
It was like being back in the first or second grade, during the virtual instruction courses… A charming virtual young lady for an instructor, even for the little snots like him. Her joyful voice, “And now we will be introduced to the simplest method of sexual self-stimulation, celebrated as far back as the biblical times. Boys, if you some of you are already familiar with it, please be quiet for a few minutes, do not interrupt…”
It was like being back at a school party, playing spin the bottle, when teenagers would split into couples and bustle into secluded nooks, hoping to find out the difference between virtuality and real sex.
It was like being back at the graduation orgy—with experienced geisha-speshes, who knew every last erotic zone of the human body and were able to give themselves to you with joyful and selfless abandon.
It was everything—and nothing. A forgery. An illusion. A surrogate for love. A cynical fake. A nutrient tablet in a starving man’s hand—something that sustained his body, but didn’t feed his hunger. An inflatable doll-woman in a museum of sexual culture. A sex-partner recommended for procreation, who carefully played out the role she had memorized since childhood.
It was anything—but not love!
Alex screamed, ripping himself out of the colorful rainbow, away from the cloying touch of electronic witchery. The system shivered, letting him out into the real world. He twisted around in the chair, having forgotten to rip off the safety straps, noiselessly yelling something, seeing the uncaring light of the screens and the serene face of Morrison.
He had been robbed blind!
A long, long time ago, before he was born! With the complete assent of his parents, who chose for their future son the secure and gainful specialization of a pilot. He was deprived of… no, he still had no idea exactly what it was… he only knew he wouldn’t be able to live without it anymore.
He had been betrayed.
He was a servant, just like the poor vassals to the aristocrats on Heraldica. Though he wasn’t being raped quite so openly.
What had he been living for?
For the cold contacts with the rainbow light?
For the right to pilot a dozen tons of metal?
For the right to die for the Empire?
Alex wept, shaking in the straps of the chair. He hadn’t cried for a long time… so very long. And he had probably never wept because of emotions before. Pain, or physical discomfort, or a botched-up assignment made him cry many times… but what was it like to weep because of an elusive, intangible feeling, not essential to life?
Thirty-four years he had been a happy pauper. He had been eating the leftover crumbs he was ordered to eat, rejoicing over gifts of cast-off rags, working to fulfill his social duties in good faith.
Now his hour of reckoning had come.
Master-pilot, spesh, captain of a starship, Alex Romanov wept, like an offended child. He wept, looking at the happy smile on the face of his co-pilot, who had no need for strange experiences.
Zodiac glittered like a Christmas-tree decoration. Its insane orbit, which curved like the number 8, now lay beyond a blinding white star that poured oceans of light onto the planet. Any earthly vegetation would not last an hour under this scorching luminary.
But life is a very tenacious thing.
The whole surface of the planet turned towards the white sun now became a carpet of mirrors. “Lotuses,” giant flying plants inhabiting the highest layers of the atmosphere, floated through the air like a many-layered carpet, avidly absorbing torrents of radiation. Somewhere far below, in cool, deep shade, Zodiac’s plants and animals went about their lives… as did its people. Guests of this strange world.
On no other planet in the galaxy were endemic things treated as gently and carefully as they were on Zodiac. Of course, technology would have allowed the construction of an orbital shield to protect the planet for the two months of the year when it passed close to the white star. But the people who had made this world their home decided to take the risk of relying on the natural protection that had been in place for hundreds of thousands of years.
Alex stood in the recreation lounge in front of the switched-on wall-size screen. He was watching a live broadcast from the surface of clouds, and above them, the greenish, off-white underside of the lotuses, drifting to follow the sun. The active part of the lotuses’ life cycle took slightly longer than those two months. The rest of the year, they carpeted the surface of the ocean, turning it into a green, scaly plain, lightly rippling on the waves. The lotuses were home to other plants and animals—little symbiotes that had perfectly adjusted to the cycle. They spent the two sunny months in the oceans, awaiting the lotuses’ return, or inside the flying plants’ thick, meaty tissue, replete with hydrogen cavities, or simply on the leaves’ underside.
“There’s a gap!” commented the announcer quietly, without any hint of fear. “Dear guests of the planet! You will now see what to do in case of a break in the lotuses.”
Maybe it had been a gust of wind, maybe something else, but the plants scattered. Amidst the greenish-white field, a blinding flash flared up. As if a fiery spear, thick and heavy, had ripped through the live shield and hit the surface of the planet. The video camera lowered itself, zooming in on a strip of forest that was hit by the flare. A light mist stood above the treetops—water was evaporating from the leaves. Then the camera showed a family—a man, a woman, and several small children—enjoying a picnic by the edge of the woods.
“Even if it looks like the affected zone is passing you by,” said the announcer cheerily, “be on the safe side. Take cover…”
The man and the woman looked sideways at the sky and moved under a tent of mirror-like reflective plastic.
“Be sure to put on personal safety-wear…”
The kids, who had been peacefully making sand-pies, took little crumpled sun-coats made from the same shiny material from their pockets. Slipped them over their shoulders, put the hoods over their little heads—and went on playing.
“If for any reason you are unable to take these safety precautions,” said the announcer amiably, “be sure to assume the following position…”
Out of a brook, which meandered a little ways off, a little girl came running. She wore nothing but a pair of panties. She looked up and then hurriedly lay down, folding her arms and her head underneath her body.
“Help will come!” said the announcer soothingly. The girl’s mother was already running towards the brook, waving a sun-coat.
“And even if it comes too late…”
The scene flooded with blinding light.
“Do not worry. The ‘sun kiss’ lasts no more than ten or twelve seconds. In most cases, the worst you can expect are some superficial burns.”
The barrage of light rushed on. The mother pulled the whimpering little girl to her feet, spanked her a few times, and then, with equal ardor, rubbed the child’s body with ointment. Then the woman sauntered back to the tent. The little girl wailed for a while and then returned to the water.
“The corporal punishment of the child, as shown here, is in no way endorsed by Zodiac’s Health Ministry. It is not a mandatory procedure after being accidentally ‘kissed by the sun,’” quickly added the announcer. “Welcome to our hospitable planet!”
The infomercial was over. Alex couldn’t suppress a crooked grin, thinking of the official statistics. Every white-sun season still claimed from twenty to thirty lives on Zodiac. Mostly tourists’, of course. Locals were more careful, and everyone, even the naturals, had adapted to “sun kisses.” In the same situation from which the little girl had emerged with only a slight redness of the skin, he, a strong and healthy man, would have been howling from the pain of being covered head to toe with blisters.