From the living room he could still hear her talking to herself as she cleared the breakfast things. The two boys were playing with the new game Danal had been given for his birthday and they did not look at him. Wana had brought out the old teaching game that all of the others had used when they were younger, a flat box that showed moving pictures on top while a voice inside explained what was happening in very simple words.
“Thank you, Wana, anyway,” he said. But she was ignoring him, too, because she did not like being scolded and was blaming him for what had happened. But he knew that she would not stay mad at him for long so he said, “What is that thing?”
After a long silence she said, “It’s a bird.”
“But what’s it doing?” he said. “There isn’t anything holding it up. Is it in a Center, in free fall?”
“Can’t you hear the words?” said Wana crossly. “It’s flying, holding itself up by pushing down against the air with its wings, those broad arms with the fuzzy edges.”
He could hear words better, he had learned over the years, than could any other member of the family. It was more difficult if they were whispered behind doors or a dividing wall, but he was still able to hear every word they said. He had not told them about his ability because he was afraid it would make the boys like him even less if he was better at anything than they were. Wana was different. She was nice and she liked him, most of the time.
“I can hear but I don’t understand all the words. What is an angle of incidence and a coefficient of—”
“I don’t understand those words, either,” she broke in. “It’s just a bird, flying up in the air and away from the ground.”
She still seemed to be angry with him and that made him feel bad. Maybe he should try to make her laugh.
Very carefully he climbed up to stand balanced on the chair, which was soft and unsteady under his feet, and began to flap his arms up and down faster and faster. Wana looked up at him, smiling, until one of his feet slipped over the edge of the cushion and he fell onto the floor.
“I tried very hard,” he said, “but I didn’t fly into the air.”
“We re playing a difficult game here that needs a lot of concentration,” said Danal. He gave a nasty laugh and went on, “And you didn’t rise in the air because your hands aren’t wide enough. Sit down and stop fooling around.”
“Did you hurt yourself?” said Wana, being friends again. “You can play this game with me if you like. I’ll show you what keys to press to change the pictures.”
He wanted to play the game, and push the tiny, close-together buttons that would change the pictures or make parts of them bigger or cause them to stop moving. But if he was clumsy, and he was always clumsy, he might break off one of the tiny control keys and ruin the game and she would not like him again.
He rubbed the wetness from his eyes and said, “No, I’ll just watch you, and behave myself.”
“Oh, that’s good,” said Wana, and laughed.
Unlike the other two, she was too young and nice to hide the relief she was feeling or say things that meant something else.
She changed the pictures to show other kinds of birds and fish and animals, and some of them looked like their parents with no clothes on, but they always came back to the first big, beautiful bird with the slow-moving arms. They were watching it yet again when their mother came in.
“Everyone is being very quiet,” she said, “Has somebody broken something or done something naughty that you don’t want to tell me about? Or are you all enjoying your games too much to want to go up to the Center?”
Everybody said “No” so quickly that he could not tell who said it first.
His mother smiled and said, “Then let’s go. Everyone, zip up your coveralls and make sure your shoes won’t come off. I’ll carry the picnic. Danal and Cawn, lead the way. Wana next and you…” she bent down to check his feet, “…had better stay close to me.”
“They’re all right,” he said. “I can tie the laces myself now.”
“Good boy,” she said, patting him on the head. “Now hold onto my hand and come along.”
They left the house and followed the others along the corridor outside, and began climbing the ramps and ladders leading up to the Center. The higher they climbed the easier it became, but slower because his feet would barely stay on the ground and he had to hold onto his mother’s hand or the netting that was stretched tightly along the walls to keep from floating away. The others were moving far ahead of them, shouting with excitement as they pulled themselves faster along the netting, but his mother held him back and told him to be patient. By the time they emerged into the Center, Danal and Cawn were already drifting into the big, empty middle and Wana was making a slow, careful jump to follow them.
Apart from the small pictures of big places shown on learning games, this was the biggest empty place he had ever seen. It would have taken about fifty adults with their arms held out sideways and holding onto each other’s hands to stretch from any one side of the hollow space to the side opposite. The last time he had been here his father had told him very slowly that it was the station’s cargo bay, that the extending arms of the handling equipment were folded flat against the inner walls and all the sharp edges protected by raised safety nets, padding or sheets of packing when not in use, and that the circular red and yellow door he could see behind the netting was opened only when there was a ship in dock discharging stores or people. His father had stopped trying to explain when it became clear that he had not understood what was being said. But he remembered the words, and now he was older and knew what most of them meant.
Neither had he any trouble understanding the meaning of his mother’s words even when he was pretending not to hear some of them.
“Be careful,” she was saying, “and stay close to the netting. Pull yourself along it with your hands, but slowly so you won’t drift away. If you get into trouble, shout and I’ll come for you. Don’t jump too hard because you’re very strong and if you hit something when you are moving too fast, you will be hurt. Another reason why I don’t want you to jump into the middle with the others is that if you started spinning there would be nothing to hold onto to stop yourself and you would be dizzy and frightened…”
She was still warning him to be careful as he began pulling himself along the net and stopping every few minutes to let his legs swing backwards and up to point toward the middle where the others were floating and turning slow somersaults. Sometimes he stopped himself with just one hand although it was harder to hold steady that way. His mother had stopped worrying out loud about him so he decided to try something new.
If he was forbidden to jump up to the middle like the others, maybe he could try jumping from the padded side of a cabinet to another one nearby and stay dose to the netting on the way over, like his mother had told him to do.
The first few times he tried it the netting kept sloping up to meet him before he reached the other cabinet, until he remembered that the Center was a hollow sphere with curving sides and he should aim higher. He looked all around and discovered that his mother was almost hidden from sight by a projecting cabinet, and anyway, all of her attention was on the others who were shouting at her to watch them. He watched, too.
They were drawing up their legs and folding their arms tightly around their knees, and for some reason this made them spin faster. When he tried to do the same behind the shelter of the cabinet, he could not roll himself up as tightly as they could but it worked anyway. It was great fun even though it made him dizzy. He went back to trying to jump between cabinets.