Then, as Heikki had hoped it would, the system switched to the drive compartment at the center of the ship. The Tank—the reinforced housing for the ship’s crystals—loomed in the center of the picture, almost filling the compartment; the dark-goggled engineers, busy at the consoles at its base, seemed almost ant-like by comparison. Light, a light so hard and white that it seemed almost solid, or at best as slow-moving as glacier ice, glowed behind the test-ports, seemed to turn the narrow line of the calibration bar to white-hot steel. Heikki blinked and reached for the shadowscreen to dim the image, even though she knew that the camera was already shielded. Before she could make the adjustment, however, a familiar three-toned chime sounded and the picture went dead. At the same time, the room lighting went red: five minutes to translation, and all non-essential personnel were to stay in their cabins. Heikki grimaced, and braced herself against the edge of the bunk. Sometimes, she thought, sometimes I think it would be better if they left the cameras on, let us watch the purposeful confusion—at least I hope it’s purposeful; Sten always swears it was—and take our minds off what’s really happening, off the fact that space and time, reality itself, are being bent around us, are being persuaded to ignore, however briefly, the laws that usually define the universe—
The red lights dimmed slightly, marking the surge of power that initiated translation. Heikki swallowed hard, feeling the first uneasiness beginning at the pit of her stomach. The sensation grew rapidly, until if she closed her eyes she could feel herself, the ship, and everything around her tumbling end over end, somersaulting lazily, each individual cell, each molecule, trying to turn itself neatly inside out. She kept her eyes open, staring at the red-lit ceiling, hoping translation would end before she was sick. Then, at last, the sensation peaked and began to fade even more rapidly than it had grown. Heikki drew a ragged breath, blinking eyes that watered from the constant light, and shifted slowly to a more comfortable position. The lights flickered again, brightened, and a moment later shifted from red to the normal spectrum. Heikki pushed herself upright, leaning against the lightly padded bulkhead, and ran her fingers through her sweat-dampened hair. The intercom clicked then, and a steward’s voice said, “Post-translation check. Everything all right, Dam’ Heikki?”
Heikki reached to the console to thumb the intercom switch—her hand seemed steady enough, but she did not want to risk the shadowscreen—and answered, “Everything’s fine here, thanks.” This time, anyway, a small, pessimistic voice whispered, but Heikki contrived to ignore it.
“Good-oh,” the steward answered, and cut the connection.
Heikki ran her hand through her hair again, and fumbled with the shadowscreen until she’d recovered the chronometer display. It was late, by ship’s time, and later still by her own internal clock. Even so, she pushed herself up off the bunk and made herself shower, washing away the fever-sweat of translation, before allowing herself to sleep.
There were three more major translations before the ship settled into the almost imperceptible microhops that would position it at the entrance to the Iadaran Roads, and Heikki faced each one with the same dour resignation. There was no chance that she might become acclimated—it took years of constant exposure to build up any tolerance at all, and some people never did—and by the time the ship swung into the Roads she was even glad to see Iadara’s disk on the viewscreen. It was a bright planet, the rich green of the forested islands almost perpetually obscured by swirling patterns of cloud. Nkosi, watching on the large screen in the passengers’ mess, shook his head at the sight.
“My God, those are fast-moving systems. What is the weather like under them?”
Djuro, who was closest, fingered the shadowscreen. Heikki said, mildly, “You were warned, Jock.”
The screen split, one half still displaying the disk as seen by the forward sensors, the other displaying strings of data from the meteorological stations. Nkosi whistled thoughtfully, and stood up to compare the two pictures more closely.
“The average windspeed seems to be thirty to forty-five kph, the humidity looks miserably high—”
“Not everywhere,” Djuro interjected, with a dry smile.
“—and, Jesus, look at that temperature differential.” Nkosi looked up, one finger tracing a line of cloud on the sensor view. “There must be some pretty big storms in there.”
Heikki nodded, looking up at the displays. “That’s the Ledoma River Plain—the area report will be from weather station red north central. You’ll almost always find some storms along the line of the river.”
“Wonderful,” Nkosi murmured, and turned his attention back to the displays.
Heikki continued staring at the picture, remembering the storms. When the thunderstorms came rushing down out of the hills, as they did almost every day in the long summer, the sky would darken, and the air change slightly, in a way you could not define, but only feel. The wind would come then, little tendrils of air licking at your sweaty skin, a touch that swelled to a breeze and then to a wind that seemed crazy-strong, strong enough to lift you off your feet, so that you ran into it, arms outstretched, yelling for it to carry you away. And then the thunder came, and the adults, and then the pelting rain, and you ran for home, to be scolded when you got there, and to hear the old saying quoted one more time, as you towelled your hair dry; summerwind makes dogs and kids crazy.
She shook herself then, putting aside the too-vivid memory; they would do her no good now, would only distract her from the present day. With a frown, she reached for her workboard and called up the paperwork that had to be completed for the landing, concentrating on the details of shipping certificates and import licenses.
Somewhat to her surprise, the freighter landed as scheduled, and the stewards did their best to minimize the chaos of unloading. There was equipment to spare, but no human beings: she and Djuro and Nkosi together jockeyed the antigrav buoyed crates through the glass walled corridors to the customs station. The inspection there was perfunctory, one tired blond skimming through the disks while another ran an ineffectual looking scanning rod over the sealed crates. Neither seemed to find anything of interest. The first clicked keys on his waist-slung keyboard, adding his own certification codes to the collection of papers, while the second peeled iridescent stickers from the roll hanging at her belt and fixed one neatly to each of the containers. It was all done with only the most necessary exchange of words. Not at all like the usual precinct planetfall, Heikki thought, and her eyebrows lifted in spite of herself. Usually, planetary customs were, if not thorough, at least more than mildly curious about strangers, especially on a world as far from the usual passenger runs as Iadara. Either they received orders from Lo-Moth to pass us through, Heikki thought, or there’s something else going on. She thanked them anyway, with the punctillious politeness she always used when dealing with customs, and joined the others in easing the crates out through the last narrow doorway.
There were autopallets for rent on the far side of the barrier, and Nkosi said, “I will get one.”
“Do that,” Heikki agreed, and stood for a moment, squinting into the sunlight that streamed in through the clear, blue-tinged bricks that formed one wall of the terminal. “What do you think?” she asked, after a moment, and saw, out of the corner of her eye, Djuro’s mouth twist briefly.
“It was funny—not like customs at all. Of course, what can you smuggle in that they can’t already buy? I bet security’s a lot tougher, going out.”
“True,” Heikki said, but her tone was less certain than her words. Still, what Djuro said was true: corporate worlds, especially one-product worlds like Iadara, tended to be fairly lax in what they allowed on-planet. And I expect he’s right, she thought, security will be tighter when we leave. After all, they wouldn’t want to risk losing any of their crystals to the black market.
“Dam’ Heikki?” The voice had a ‘pointer crispness, and Heikki looked up sharply.
“That’s me. Are you from Lo-Moth?” She heard crisp footsteps behind her, and realized that customs had finished with FitzGilbert.
“Yes, that’s right. Ah, Dam’ FitzGilbert, it’s good to see you back.” He looked back at Heikki, with a wary, professional smile that included all the off-worlders. “I’m Jens Neilenn.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Heikki murmured. “My assistant, Sten Djuro, my pilot, Jock Nkosi.”
Neilenn managed a polite greeting for both of them, though Nkosi’s handshake nearly overwhelmed him. The Iadaran was a little man, in his middle forties, with bright eyes webbed in a net of wrinkles: permanent middle management, Heikki guessed, and content to remain there.
“Director Mikelis asked me to act as your liaison,” Neilenn went on. “I’ve taken the liberty of arranging rooms for you at the corporate hostel, but if that doesn’t suit your needs, I can make other arrangements first thing in the morning.”
Morning? Heikki thought. Surely that was morning sunlight outside the translucent wall…. And then she remembered. The spaceport was built to the west of the city, along the east-west axis that would protect it from the worst of the winds. She was looking into the sunset, not the sunrise her body had assumed it to be. “That’d be
