The old one perceived the remark's unconscious depth. She smiled, and began to laugh. The youth looked at her, as if thinking her mad. But she could not explain what was so funny, that they had reached for the perils of the stellar winds, and found only safety and trepidation.
'What's the matter? Are you all right? What is it?'
'Nothing,' she said. 'Thou wouldst not understand.' She no longer felt like laughing, but exhausted and ill. 'I will sleep,' she said, having regained her dignity. She turned her gaze from the beautiful youth.
* * *
Waking, she felt warm, as if she were sleeping in the sun on a pinnacle of rock with the whole world spreading out around her. But her cheek rested against chill metal; she opened her eyes knowing once more where she was.
The youth lay beside her, asleep, wing outstretched across them both. She started to speak but remained silent.
She felt she should be angry, but the closeness was too pleasurable. Guilt sprang up, at allowing this child to retain desire for the love of one about to die, but still the old one did not move. She lay beneath the caressing wing, seeking to recapture her dreams. But the youth shifted, and the old one found herself looking into dark, gold- flecked, startled eyes.
The youth pulled away. 'I am sorry. I meant only to warm you, not to...'
'I... found it pleasant, after so long in this cold metal. I thank thee.'
The youth gazed at her, realizing gradually what she had said, then lay down and gently enfolded her again.
'Thou art a fool. Thou dost seek pain.'
The youth rested against her, head on her shoulder.
'I will only call thee 'thee,' ' she said.
'All right.'
* * *
The flying chamber enclosed half the levels of a segment two twelfths of the habitation wide. Its floor and its side walls were transparent to space.
The old one and the youth stood on a brilliant path of stars. On one side of them, the sails rippled as they changed position to hold the ship on course. They obscured a point of light only slightly brighter than the stars that formed its background: the sun of the home planet, the star this ship and a thousand like it had abandoned. On the other side, a second star flared bright, and even the old one could see the changing phases of the spheres that circled it.
The youth stared out at the illuminated edge of their destination. 'Will you be happy there?'
'I'll be happy to see the sky and the land again.'
'A blue sky, without stars... I think that will be very empty.'
'We became used to this ship,' the old one said. 'We can go back again as easily.' She turned, spread her wings, ran a few steps, and lifted herself into the air. The takeoff felt clumsy, but the flying was more graceful.
She glided, spiraling upward on the gravity gradient. To fly higher with less and less effort had been strange and exciting; now she only wished for a way to test her strength to the breaking point. Her distance perception had weakened with time, but she knew the dimensions of the chamber by kinesthetic sense and memory: long enough to let one glide, but not soar, wide enough to let one stroke slowly from one side to the next, but not tax one's muscles with speed, deep enough to let one swoop, but not dive.
At the top of the chamber, she slid through the narrow space between ceiling and walking bridge; she heard the youth, behind her, falter, then plunge through. The old one had laughed when they built the crossing, but there were those who could not cross the chamber without the bridge, and that she did not find amusing.
Sound guided her. Sometimes she wished to plug her ears and fly oblivious to the echoes that marked boundaries. She had considered dying that way, soaring with senses half crippled until she crashed against the thick tapestry of stars and blessed the sailship with her blood. But she wanted to touch the earth again; so she continued to live.
She grew tired; her bones would ache when she had rested. She dipped her wings and slipped toward the floor, stretching to combat the rising end of the gradient. She landed; her wings drooped around her. The youth touched down and approached her. 'I am tired.'
She appreciated the concession to her dignity. 'I, too.'
* * *
The days passed; the youth stayed with her. They flew together, and they sailed the long-deserted ion boats in the whirlpools of converging stellar winds. At first fearful, the youth gained confidence as the old one demonstrated the handling of the sails. The old one recalled other, half-forgotten voyages with other, long-dead youths. Her companion's growing pleasure made her briefly glad that her dream of dying properly, veiled and soaring, had kept her from taking one of the boats and sailing until the air ran out or some accident befell her.
* * *
When the features of the new world could be discerned, the old one made the long walk to the navigation room. Her eyes no longer let her feel the stars, and so she did not navigate, yet though the young people could guide the ship as well as her generation had, she felt uneasy leaving her fate in the hands of others. From the doorway, she pushed off gently and floated to the center of the chamber. A few young adults drifted inside the transparent hemisphere, talking, half dozing, watching the relationships between ship, planet, primary, and stars. The navigation room did not rotate; directions were by convention. Streaked with clouds, glinting with oceans, the crescent world loomed above them; below, the ship's main body spun, a reflective expanse spotted with dark ports and the transparent segment of the flying chamber.
'Hello, grandmother.'
'Hello, grandchild.' She should call him 'grandson,' she thought, but she was accustomed to the other, though this child of her first child, already youngermated, had long been adult. She felt once more that she should choose a graceful way to die.
Nearby, two people conferred about a few twelfths of a second of arc and altered the tension on the main sail lines. Like a concave sheet of water, the sail rippled and began to fold.
'It seems the engines will not be necessary.' They had begun the turn already; the stars were shifting around them.
He shrugged, only his shoulders, not his wings. 'Perhaps just a little.' He gazed at her for a long time without speaking. 'Grandmother, you know the planet is smaller than we thought.' She looked up at the white-misted, half- shadowed globe. 'Not a great deal, surely.'
'Considerably. It's much denser for its mass than our world was. The surface gravity will be higher.'
'How much?'
'Enough that our people would be uncomfortable.'
The conditional, by its implications, frightened her. 'Our people are weak,' she said. 'Have the council suggest they move to the first level.'
'No one would, grandmother.' Though he never flew, he sounded sad.
'You are saying we will not land?'
'How can we? No one could live.'
'No one?'
'You are old, grandmother.'
'And tired of sailing. I want to fly again.'
'No one could fly on that world.'
'How can you say? You don't even fly in the chamber.' He stared down at the shimmering, half-folded sails. 'I fly with them. Those are all the wings our people need.'
The old one flexed her wing-fingers; the membranes opened, closed, opened. 'Is that what everyone believes?'
'It's true. The sails have carried us for two generations. Why should we abandon them now?'
'How can we depend on them so heavily? Grandson, we came onto this ship to test ourselves, and you're saying we will avoid the test.'
'The ambitions and needs of a people can change.'
