for about a million years, right?'
Rhombus's web rippled in agreement.
Rissa nodded and keyed her mike. 'We duration since the time we started talking times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred. This one duration since the time we started talking times one hundred plus one hundred.' She touched the off switch. 'I told him that as a civilization, we're a million years old, but Starplex itself is just two years old.'
Cat's Eye replied by reiterating the number for its own personal age, followed by the word for minus, then repeating the equation for Starplex's tiny age, adding the word for 'equals,' and then reiterating the same sequence it had used to express its own age. 'Very loosely,' said Rissa, 'I think he's saying that our age is nothing compared to his.'
'Well, he's right about that,' said Keith, laughing. 'I wonder what it would feel like to be that old?'
Chapter XV
Keith rarely entered any of the ship's Ibese areas. Gravity was kept at 1.41 times Earth normal there (and 1.72 times ship's standard); Keith felt as though he weighed 115 kilograms, instead of his usual 82.
He could stand it for short periods of time, but it wasn't pleasant.
The corridors here were much wider than elsewhere aboard Starplex, and the interdeck areas were thicker, making for lower ceilings. Keith didn't have to stoop, but he found himself doing so anyway. The air was warm and dry.
Keith came to the room he was looking for, its door marked with a matrix of yellow lights forming a rectangular shape with a small cimle just below the rectangle's base at each end. Keith had never seen a train with wheels, except in a museum, but the pictogram did indeed look like a boxcar.
Keith spoke into the air. 'Let her know I'm here, please, PHANTOM.'
PHANTOM chirped acknowledgment, and a moment later, presumably having received Boxcar's permission, the door slid aside.
Ib living quarters were unusual by human standards. At first, they seemed luxuriously big — the room Keith had entered measured eight by ten meters. But then one realized that they were actually the same size as every other apartment aboard ship, but weren't divided into separate sleeping, living, and bathing areas. There were no chairs or couches, of course. Nor was there any carpeting; the floor was covered with a hard robber material. On their home-world, in preindustrial times, Ibs built mounds of earth just wide enough so that they would fit between their wheels — so that the frame and the other components could be supported when the wheels temporarily separated from the body.
Boxcar had the manufactured equivalent of such a mound in one corner of her room, but that was its only furnishing.
Keith found the art on the walls strange and disconcerting: peanut-shaped images consisting of multiple, often distorted, views of the same object from different angles superimposed one atop the other.
He couldn't make out what the ones on the far wall showed, but he was startled to realize that the series of them nearest to him were studies of severely premature human and Waldahud babies, with stubby limbs, and strange, translucent heads. Boxcar was a biologist, after all, and alien life was probably fascinating to her, but the choice of subject matter was unsettling to say the least.
Boxcar rolled toward Keith from the far side of the room.
It was nerve-racking to have an Ib approach from a good distance. They liked to accelerate to high speed and then stop with a jerk only a meter or two away. Keith had never heard of a human getting steamrollered by one, but he was always afraid he'd be the first.
The Ib's lights flashed. 'Dr. Lansing,' she said. 'An unexpected pleasure. Please, please — I have no seat to offer you, but I know the gravity is too high. Feel free to rest on my comfort mound.' A rope flicked in the direction of the wedge-shaped construct at the side of the room.
Keith's first thought was to reject the offer, but, dammit, it was unpleasant standing under this gravity. He walked over to the mound and rested his rear on it. 'Thank you,' he said. He didn't know how to begin, but he knew he would offend the Ib if he wasted time coming to the point. 'Rissa asked me to come to see you. She says you are going to discorporate soon.'
'Dear, sweet Rissa,' said Boxcar. 'Her concern is touching.'
Keith looked around the room, thinking. 'I want you to know,' he said at last, 'that you don't have to go through with the discorporation — at least so long as you are aboard Starplex. All staff aboard this ship are considered de facto embassy personnel; I can try to arrange immunity for you.'
He looked at the being; he wished it had a face — wished it had normal eyes, eyes that he could try to read. 'Your service has been exemplary; there's no reason why you couldn't continue to serve aboard Starplex for the rest of your natural life.'
'You are kind, Dr. Lansing. Very kind. But I must be true to myself. Understand that though I have not mentioned my impending discorporation to anyone, I have been preparing mentally and physically for it for centuries now. I have timed the events of my life to conclude now; I wouldn't know what to do with the extra fifty years.'
'You could continue your research. Who knows? With another half century of work on the senescence problem, you might lick it. You might never have to die.'
'An eternity of shame, Dr. Lansing? An eternity of guilt? No, thank you. I am unalterably committed to my stated course of action.'
Keith was quiet for a moment, thinking. Arguments and counterarguments ran through his head; new tacks, new approaches. But he dismissed them all. It wasn't his business, wasn't his place. Finally, he nodded.
'Is there anything I can do to make it easier for you? Any special facilities or equipment you need?'
'There is a ceremony. Normally, most Ibs would not attend; to do so would be to have the guilty party end up wasting even more of their time. I imagine that only my closest Ib friends will come. So, on that basis, I have no need for a large venue. But, since you have offered, I would request, if possible, that I be allowed to use one of the docking bays for the ceremony — and that once the ceremony is completed, my component parts be ejected into space.'
'If that is what you'd like, then of course you have my permission.'
'Thank you, Dr. Lansing. Thank you very much.'
Keith nodded, and headed for the door. He made his way down the warm corridor, back into the CAGE conditions of the central shaft.
Normally, when he exited an Ibese area into the lower gravity of the rest of the ship, he felt buoyant, light as a feather.
But not this time. 'Tachyon pulse!' announced Rhombus from the ExOps station. 'Something coming through the shortcut. Small object, only about a meter in diameter.'
Most likely a watson, Keith thought. 'Let's have a look at it, Rhombus.' Part of the spherical hologram was set off by a blue border, and inside the border was a telescopic view of the object that had popped out of the shortcut.
'Welcome home!' said Thor Magnor, grinning broadly.
'Somebody better get Hek and Shanu Azmi down here,' said Keith.
'Will do,' said Lianne, then a moment later, 'They're on their way.'
The port starfield split and the Waldahud alien-communications specialist waddled onto the bridge. Almost simultaneously, the door behind the seating gallery opened up, and Shahinshah Azmi came in. He was wearing tennis shorts and holding a racket. Keith gestured at the magnified image. 'Look what's come back,' he said.
All four of Hek's eyes went wide. 'That's… that's wonderful!'
'Rhombus,' Keith said, 'scan it for anything untoward. If it's clean, use a tractor beam to haul it into docking bay six.'
'Scanning… no obvious problems. Locking on tractor beam.'
'Keep it isolated inside a forcefield once you get it aboard.'
