it?'
'Greta?' I asked, disbelievingly.
She nodded. 'For my sins.'
'My God. It is you, isn't it?'
'I wasn't sure you'd recognize me. Especially after all this time.'
'You didn't have much trouble recognizing me.'
'I didn't have to. The moment you popped out, we picked up your recovery transponder. Told us the name of your ship, who owned her, who was flying it, what you were carrying, where you were supposed to be headed. When I heard it was you, I made sure I was part of the reception team. But don't worry. It's not like you've changed all that much.'
'Well, you haven't either,' I said.
It wasn't quite true. But who honestly wants to hear that they look about ten years older than the last time you saw them, even if they still don't look all that bad with it? I thought about how she had looked naked, memories that I'd kept buried for a decade spooling into daylight. It shamed me that they were still so vivid, as if some furtive part of my subconscious had been secretly hoarding them through years of marriage and fidelity.
Greta half smiled. It was as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.
'You were never a good liar, Thorn.'
'Yeah. Guess I need some practice.'
There was an awkward silence. Neither of us seemed to know what to say next. While we hesitated, the others floated around us, saying nothing.
'Well,' I said. 'Who'd have guessed we'd end up meeting like this?'
Greta nodded and offered the palms of her hands in a kind of apology.
'I'm just sorry we aren't meeting under better circumstances,' she said. 'But if it's any consolation, what happened wasn't at all your fault. We checked your syntax, and there wasn't a mistake. It's just that now and then the system throws a glitch.'
'Funny how no one likes to talk about that very much,' I said.
'Could have been worse, Thorn. I remember what you used to tell me about space travel.'
'Yeah? Which particular pearl of wisdom would that have been?'
'If you're in a position to moan about a situation, you've no right to be moaning.'
'Christ. Did I actually say that?'
'Mm. And I bet you're regretting it now. But look, it really isn't that bad. You're only twenty days off schedule.' Greta nodded toward the man who had the bad teeth. 'Kolding says you'll only need a day of damage repair before you can move off again, and then another twenty, twenty-five days before you reach your destination, depending on routing patterns. That's less than six weeks. So you lose the bonus on this one. Big deal. You're all in one shape, and your ship only needs a little work. Why don't you just bite the bullet and sign the repair paperwork?'
'I'm not looking forward to another twenty days in the surge tank. There's something else, as well.'
'Which is?'
I was about to tell her about Katerina, how she'd have been expecting me back already.
Instead I said: 'I'm worried about the others. Suzy and Ray. They've got families expecting them. They'll be worried.'
'I understand,' Greta said. 'Suzy and Ray. They're still asleep, aren't they? Still in their surge tanks?'
'Yes,' I said, guardedly.
'Keep them that way until you're on your way.' Greta smiled. 'There's no sense worrying them about their families, either. It's kinder.'
'If you say so.'
'Trust me on this one, Thorn. This isn't the first time I've handled this kind of situation. Doubt it'll be the last, either.'
I stayed in a hotel overnight, in another part of Saumlaki. The hotel was an echoing multilevel prefab structure, sunk deep into bedrock. It must have had a capacity for hundreds of guests, but at the moment only a handful of the rooms seemed to be occupied. I slept fitfully and got up early. In the atrium, I saw a bib-capped worker in rubber gloves removing diseased carp from a small ornamental pond. Watching him pick out the ailing metallic- orange fish, I had a flash of deja vu. What was it about dismal hotels and dying carp?
Before breakfast-bleakly alert, even though I didn't really feel as if I'd had a good night's sleep-I visited Kolding and got a fresh update on the repair schedule.
'Two, three days,' he said.
'It was a day last night.'
Kolding shrugged. 'You've got a problem with the service, find someone else to fix your ship.'
Then he stuck his little finger into the corner of his mouth and began to dig between his teeth.
'Nice to see someone who really enjoys his work,' I said.
I left Kolding before my mood worsened too much, making my way to a different part of the station.
Greta had suggested we meet for breakfast and catch up on old times. She was there when I arrived, sitting at a table in an 'outdoor' terrace, under a red-and-white striped canopy, sipping orange juice. Above us was a dome several hundred meters wide, projecting a cloudless holographic sky. It had the hard, enameled blue of midsummer.
'How's the hotel?' she asked after I'd ordered a coffee from the waiter.
'Not bad. No one seems very keen on conversation, though. Is it me or does that place have all the cheery ambience of a sinking ocean liner?'
'It's just this place,' Greta said. 'Everyone who comes here is pissed off about it. Either they got transferred here and they're pissed off about that, or they ended up here by routing error and they're pissed off about that instead. Take your pick.'
'No one's happy?'
'Only the ones who know they're getting out of here soon.'
'Would that include you?'
'No.' she said. 'I'm more or less stuck here. But I'm OK about it. I guess I'm the exception that proves the rule.'
The waiters were glass mannequins of a kind that had been fashionable in the core worlds about twenty years ago. One of them placed a croissant in front of me, then poured scalding black coffee into my cup.
'Well, it's good to see you,' I said.
'You too, Thorn.' Greta finished her orange juice and then took a corner of my croissant for herself, without asking. 'I heard you got married.'
'Yes.'
'Well? Aren't you going to tell me about her?'
I drank some of my coffee. 'Her name's Katerina.'
'Nice name.'
'She works in the department of bioremediation on Ka-gawa.'
'Kids?' Greta asked.
'Not yet. It wouldn't be easy, the amount of time we both spend away from home.'
'Mm.' She had a mouthful of croissant. 'But one day you might think about it.'
'Nothing's ruled out,' I said. As flattered as I was that she was taking such an interest in me, the surgical precision of her questions left me slightly uncomfortable. There was no thrust and parry, no fishing for information. That kind of directness unnerved. But at least it allowed me to ask the same questions. 'What about you, then?'
'Nothing very exciting. I got married a year or so after I last saw you. A man called Marcel.'
'Marcel,' I said, ruminatively, as if the name had cosmic significance. 'Well, I'm happy for you. I take it he's here too?'
'No. Our work took us in different directions. We're still married, but…' Greta left the sentence hanging.
'It can't be easy,' I said.
'If it was meant to work, we'd have found a way. Anyway, don't feel too sorry for either of us. We've both got our work. I wouldn't say I was any less happy than the last time we met.'
