stars, like a myriad neon fish caught in a snapshot of frozen motion. There were vast billowing backdrops of red and green cloud, veined and flawed by filaments of cool black. There were bluffs and promontories of ochre dust, so rich in three-dimensional structure that they resembled an exuberant im-pasto of oil colors; contours light-years thick laid on with a trowel. Red or pink stars burned through the dust like lanterns. Orphaned worlds were caught erupting from the towers, little spermlike shapes trailing viscera of dust. Here and there I saw the tiny eyelike knots of birthing solar systems. There were pulsars, flashing on and off like navigation beacons, their differing rhythms seeming to set a stately tempo for the entire scene, like a deathly slow waltz. There seemed too much detail for one view, an overwhelming abundance of richness, and yet no matter which direction I looked, there was yet more to see, as if the dome sensed my attention and concentrated its efforts on the spot where my gaze was directed. For a moment I felt a lurching sense of dizziness, and-though I tried to stop it before I made a fool of myself-I found myself grasping the side of the table, as if to stop myself falling into the infinite depths of the view.

'Yes, it has that effect on people,' Greta said.

'It's beautiful,' I said.

'Do you mean beautiful, or terrifying?'

I realized I wasn't sure. 'It's big,' was all I could offer.

'Of course, it's faked,' Greta said, her voice soft now that she was leaning closer. 'The glass in the dome is smart. It exaggerates the brightness of the stars, so that the human eye registers the differences between them. Otherwise the colors aren't unrealistic. Everything else you see is also pretty accurate, if you accept that certain frequencies have been shifted into the visible band, and the scale of certain structures has been adjusted.' She pointed out features for my edification. 'That's the edge of the Taurus Dark Cloud, with the Pleiades just poking out. That's a filament of the Local Bubble. You see that open cluster?'

She waited for me to answer. 'Yes,' I said.

'That's the Hyades. Over there you've got Betelguese and Bellatrix.'

'I'm impressed.'

'You should be. It cost a lot of money.' She leaned back a bit, so that the shadows dropped across her face again. 'Are you all right, Thorn? You seem a bit distracted.'

I sighed.

'I just got another prognosis from your friend Kolding. That's enough to put a dent in anyone's day.'

'I'm sorry about that.'

'There's something else, too,' I said. 'Something that's been bothering me since I came out of the tank.'

A mannequin came to take our order. I let Greta choose for me.

'You can talk to me, whatever it is,' she said, when the mannequin had gone.

'It isn't easy.'

'Something personal, then? Is it about Katerina?' She bit her tongue 'No, sorry. I shouldn't have said that.'

'It's not about Katerina. Not exactly, anyway.' But even as I said it, I knew that in a sense it was about Katerina, and how long it was going to be before we saw each other again.

'Go on, Thom.'

'This is going to sound silly. But I wonder if everyone's being straight with me. It's not just Kolding. It's you as well. When I came out of that tank I felt the same way I felt when I'd been out to the Rift. Worse, if anything. I felt like I'd been in the tank for a long, long time.'

'It feels that way sometimes.'

'I know the difference, Greta. Trust me on this.'

'So what are you saying?'

The problem was that I wasn't really sure. It was one thing to feel a vague sense of unease about how long I'd been in the tank. It was another to come out and accuse my host of lying. Especially when she had been so hospitable.

'Is there any reason you'd lie to me?'

'Come off it, Thom. What kind of a question is that?'

As soon as I had come out with it, it sounded absurd and offensive to me as well. I wished I could reverse time and start again, ignoring my misgivings.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'Stupid. Just put it down to messed up biorhythms, or something.'

She reached across the table and took my hand, as she had done at breakfast. This time she continued to hold it.

'You really feel wrong, don't you?'

'Kolding's games aren't helping, that's for sure.' The waiter brought our wine, setting it down, the bottle chinking against his delicately articulated glass fingers. The mannequin poured two glasses and I sampled mine. 'Maybe if I had someone else from my crew to bitch about it all with, I wouldn't feel so bad. I know you said we shouldn't wake Suzy and Ray, but that was before a one-day stopover turned into a week.'

Greta shrugged. 'If you want to wake them, no one's going to stop you. But don't think about ship business now. Let's not spoil a perfect evening.'

I looked up at the stars. It was heightened, with the mad shimmering intensity of a Van Gogh nightscape. It made one feel drunk and ecstatic just to look at it. 'What could possibly spoil it?' I asked.

What happened is that I drank too much wine and ended up sleeping with Greta. I'm not sure how much of a part the wine played in it for her. If her relationship with Marcel was in as much trouble as she'd made out, then obviously she had less to lose than I did. Yes, that made it all right, didn't it? She the seductress, her own marriage a wreck, me the hapless victim. I'd lapsed, yes, but it wasn't really my fault. I'd been alone, far from home, emotionally fragile, and she had exploited me. She had softened me up with a romantic meal, her trap already sprung.

Except all that was self-justifying bullshit, wasn't it? If my own marriage was in such great shape, why had I failed to mention Greta when I called home? At the time, I'd justified that omission as an act of kindness toward my wife. Ka-terina didn't know that Greta and I had ever been a couple. But why worry Katerina by mentioning another woman, even if I pretended that we'd never met before?

Except-now-I could see that I'd failed to mention Greta for another reason entirely. Because in the back of my mind, even then, there had been the possibility that we might end up sleeping together.

I was already covering myself when I called Katerina. Already making sure there wouldn't be any awkward questions when I got home. As if I not only knew what was going to happen but secretly yearned for it.

The only problem was that Greta had something else in mind.

'Thom,' Greta said, nudging me toward wakefulness. She was lying naked next to me, leaning on one elbow, with the sheets crumpled down around her hips. The light in her room turned her into an abstraction of milky blue curves and deep violet shadows. With one black-nailed finger she traced a line down my chest and said: 'There's something you need to know.'

'What?' I asked.

'I lied. Kolding lied. We all lied.'

I was too drowsy for her words to have much more than a vaguely troubling effect. All I could say, again, was: 'What?'

'You're not in Saumlaki Station. You're not in Schedar sector.'

I started waking up properly. 'Say that again.'

'The routing error was more severe than you were led to believe. It took you far beyond the Local Bubble.'

I groped for anger, even resentment, but all I felt was a dizzying sensation of falling. 'How far out?'

'Farther than you thought possible.'

The next question was obvious.

'Beyond the Rift?'

'Yes,' she said, with the faintest of smiles, as if humoring a game whose rules and objectives she found ultimately demeaning. 'Beyond the Aquila Rift. A long, long way beyond it.'

'I need to know, Greta.'

She pushed herself from the bed, reached for a gown. 'Then get dressed. I'll show you.'

I followed Greta in a daze.

She took me to the dome again. It was dark, just as it had been the night before, with only the lamp-lit tables to act as beacons. I supposed that the illumination throughout Saumlaki Station (or wherever this was) was at the

Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату