'Well, that's good,' I said.
Greta leaned over and touched my hand. Her fingernails were midnight black with a blue sheen.
'Look. This is really presumptuous of me. It's one thing asking to meet up for breakfast. It would have been rude not to. But how would you like to meet again later? It's really nice to eat here in the evening. They turn down the lights. The view through the dome is really something.'
I looked up into that endless holographic sky.
'I thought it was faked.'
'Oh, it is,' she said. 'But don't let that spoil it for you.'
I settled in front of the camera and started speaking.
'Katerina,' I said. 'Hello. I hope you're all right. By now I hope someone from the company will have been in touch. If they haven't, I'm pretty sure you'll have made your own inquiries. I'm not sure what they told you, but I promise you that we're safe and sound and that we're coming home. I'm calling from somewhere called Saumlaki station, a repair facility on the edge of Schedar sector. It's not much to look at: just a warren of tunnels and centrifuges dug into a pitch-black D-type asteroid, about half a light-year from the nearest star. The only reason it's here at all is because there happens to be an aperture next door. That's how we got here in the first place. Somehow or other Blue Goose took a wrong turn in the network, what they call a routing error. The Goose came in last night, local time, and I've been in a hotel since then. I didn't call last night because I was too tired and disoriented after coming out of the tank, and I didn't know how long we were going to be here. Seemed better to wait until morning, when we'd have a better idea of the damage to the ship. It's nothing serious-just a few bits and pieces buckled during the transit-but it means we're going to be here for another couple of days. Kolding-he's the repair chief-says three at the most. By the time we get back on course, however, we'll be about forty days behind schedule.'
I paused, eyeing the incrementing cost indicator. Before I sat down in the booth, I always had an eloquent and economical speech queued up in my head, one that conveyed exactly what needed to be said, with the measure and grace of a soliloquy. But my mind always dried up as soon as I opened my mouth, and instead of an actor I ended up sounding like a small time thief, concocting some fumbling alibi in the presence of quick-witted interrogators.
I smiled awkwardly and continued: 'It kills me to think this message is going to take so long to get to you. But if there's a silver lining, it's that I won't be far behind it. By the time you get this, I should be home in only a couple of days. So don't waste money replying to this, because by the time you get it I'll already have left Saumlaki Station. Just stay where you are, and I promise I'll be home soon.'
That was it. There was nothing more I needed to say, other than: 'I miss you.' Delivered after a moment's pause, I meant it to sound emphatic. But when I replayed the recording it sounded more like an afterthought.
I could have recorded it again, but I doubted that I would have been any happier. Instead I just committed the existing message for transmission and wondered how long it would have to wait before going on its way. Since it seemed unlikely that there was a vast flow of commerce in and out of Saumlaki, our ship might be the first suitable outbound vessel.
I emerged from the booth. For some reason I felt guilty, as if I had been in some way neglectful. It took me a while before I realized what was playing on my mind. I'd told Kate-rina about Saumlaki Station. I'd even told her about Kolding and the damage to the Blue Goose. But I hadn't told her about Greta.
It's not working with Suzy.
She's too smart, too well-attuned to the physiological correlatives of surge tank immersion. I can give her all the reassurances in the world, but she knows she's been under too long for this to be anything other than a truly epic screw-up. She knows that we aren't just talking weeks or even months of delay here. Every nerve in her body is screaming that message into her skull.
'I had dreams,' she says, when the grogginess fades.
'What kind?'
'Dreams that I kept waking. Dreams that you were pulling me out of the surge tank. You and someone else.'
I do my best to smile. I'm alone, but Greta isn't far away. The hypodermic's in my pocket now.
'I always get bad dreams coming out of the tank,' I say.
'These felt real. Your story kept changing, but you kept telling me we were somewhere… that we 'd gone a little off course, but that it was nothing to worry about.'
So much for Greta's reassurance that Suzy will remember nothing after our aborted efforts at waking her. Seems that her short-term memory isn't quite as fallible as we'd like.
'It's funny you should say that,' I tell her. 'Because, actually, we are a little off course.'
She's sharper with every breath. Suzy was always the best of us at coming out of the tank.
'Tell me how far, Thorn.'
'Farther than I'd like.'
She balls her fists. I can't tell if it's aggression, or some lingering neuromuscular effect of her time in the tank. 'How far? Beyond the Bubble?'
'Beyond the Bubble, yes.'
Her voice grows small and childlike.
'Tell me, Thorn. Are we out beyond the Rift?'
I can hear the fear. I understand what she's going through. It's the nightmare that all ship crews live with, on every trip. That something will go wrong with the routing, something so severe that they 'II end up on the very edge of the network. That they'll end up so far from home that getting back will take years, not months. And that, of course, years will have already passed, even before they begin the return trip.
That loved ones will be years older when they reach home.
If they 're still there. If they still remember you, or want to remember. If they 're still recognizable, or alive.
Beyond the Aquila Rift. It's shorthand for the trip no one ever hopes to make by accident. The one that will screw up the rest of your life, the one that creates the ghosts you see haunting the shadows of company bars across the whole Bubble. Men and women ripped out of time, cut adrift from families and lovers by an accident of an alien technology we use but barely comprehend.
'Yes,' I say. 'We're beyond the Rift.'
Suzy screams, knitting her face into a mask of anger and denial. My hand is cold around the hypodermic. I consider using it.
A new repair estimate from Kolding. Five, six days.
This time I didn't even argue. I just shrugged and walked out, wondering how long it would be next time.
That evening I sat down at the same table where Greta and I had met over breakfast. The dining area had been well lit before, but now the only illumination came from the table lamps and the subdued lighting panels set into the paving. In the distance, a glass mannequin cycled from empty table to empty table, playing Asturias on a glass guitar. There were no other patrons dining tonight.
I didn't have long to wait for Greta.
'I'm sorry I'm late, Thom.'
I turned to her as she approached the table. I liked the way she walked in the low gravity of the station, the way the subdued lighting traced the arc of her hips and waist. She eased into her seat and leaned toward me in the manner of a conspirator. The lamp on the table threw red shadows and gold highlights across her face. It took ten years off her age.
'You aren't late,' I said. 'And anyway, I had the view.'
'It's an improvement, isn't it?'
'That wouldn't be saying much,' I said with a smile. 'But yes, it's definitely an improvement.'
'I could sit out here all night and just look at it. In fact sometimes that's exactly what I do. Just me and a bottle of wine.'
'I don't blame you.'
Instead of the holographic blue, the dome was now full of stars. It was like no kind of view I'd ever seen from another station or ship. There were furious blue-white stars embedded in what looked like sheets of velvet. There were hard gold gems and soft red smears, like finger smears in pastel. There were streams and currents of fainter
