Alien Earth. Megan Lindholm

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СКАЧАТЬ Tug will play a game. Pay attention to the frequency emanations and line up to match them. Then you will dock well.”

      [Evangeline pays attention. Docking with Delta Station.]

      2

      IN COMPARISON TO the quiet of Evangeline’s gondola, the corridors of Delta Station swirled with life and its accompanying cacophony of noise. John felt all the symptoms of sensory overload syndrome: the headache, the vague nausea, the lassitude of permanent gravity. None of them were enough to completely distract his mind from his most gnawing discomfort: Norwich had expressed polite disinterest in renegotiating their contract. John clenched his teeth and resolutely jerked his mind away from considering it. He had business to conduct, and he’d better be alert about it. He nodded agreement to whatever pleasantry the garrulous little representative from Earth Affirmed was mouthing as John followed him through Delta’s corridors. It irked John that no one else had expressed any interest in hiring them.

      Time was when he and Evangeline would have had a dozen offers before he’d even docked. But they’d worked steady runs for Norwich so long now that no one even considered them anymore. He’d posted Evangeline’s availability on the listings screen, but didn’t hope for much from that. Every captain knew that the only decent jobs were the ones that came looking for a specific ship and captain, and they’d been off the open market too long. He’d already had a couple of calls from other captains, wanting to know how he and Norwich had fallen out. Well, he was damned if he knew, he reflected bitterly. The only other call had been from Earth Affirmed, reiterating their interest and setting up this meeting.

      “… disorientation and sensory overload when you first come back into a station?”

      “Usually,” John replied shortly, guessing at the man’s question. “It’s a hazard of the profession. One learns to live with it.”

      Deckenson insisted on talking to him as they walked. John wished he wouldn’t. He was only hearing about one third of what Earth Affirmed’s man was saying, and couldn’t keep his mind on that much. The sights and sounds of Human activity in the station corridors were overwhelming after the years aboard Evangeline. That those years had passed as a matter of months for John didn’t diminish the effect, but intensified it. How could so much have changed so greatly in what felt like such a short time to him?

      The wide white corridors of Delta Station swarmed with people of all ages, dressed in every imaginable garment. The brightness diffusing from the high-domed ceilings made it eternally a summer morning. A light wind stirred the plantings and people’s garments, carrying with it a scent of flowers and only a trace of machine oil from the fans that generated it. The utilitarian corridors he remembered had blossomed into something more reminiscent of a botanical garden. Even the people looked cultivated for their diversity. Riotous colors and swirling fabrics of every sort had replaced the sedate white togas and brown leggings that had been in favor when he left. Even stranger was the population change. A Rabby had been a rare sight when last he’d been here. Now they made up about one quarter of the population, and at almost every corner there were discreet jets where they could recharge their breathing tanks. The Arthroplana had recently and somewhat grudgingly granted Humans the privilege of having unsupervised contact with selected Rabby individuals on a face-to-face basis. The grant had been accompanied by many dour warnings that Humans were as yet still too disharmonious in nature to be granted general access to the Rabby race as a whole. From the few Rabby John had ever communicated with, he wondered why anyone would want to talk to any of them, unsupervised and face-to-face or any other way. They were boring as hell. Yet the fact that the Arthroplana had the power to restrict Humanity’s access to the other sentient species still galled him. It all came back to the Arthroplana’s monopoly on interplanetary travel. Didn’t everything? he reminded himself sourly.

      The population diversity wasn’t the only change in the corridors. Decorative art seemed to be enjoying a renaissance. The austerity of slag sculptures had given way to living embellishments. John could remember when the export of live plants to any of the dirty-tech stations, for other than edible use, had been a grave offense. He could still remember his very first trip to one of the tank rooms, his small hands secured in front of him lest he yield to any disruptive unadjusted impulses. He’d hated the plants then, because he’d believed they could never be his, could never be touched by him. So often they’d told him he could never be allowed around any living thing except another Human.

      Now vinery draped doorways and blossoms dangled from sculptures. Fountains spattered and danced in enfoliated basins at every intersection. Music was playing, at an audio level that was so low he was barely sure he could hear it, yet it was annoyingly pervasive. Last time he’d been in port, public music had been illegal in the corridors. Noise pollution, they’d called it. All music had been confined to private residences and offices, so that those who didn’t enjoy it didn’t have to be annoyed by it. John turned to ask Deckenson about it, only to realize the man was a dozen steps ahead of him, still blithely chattering. Spotting him and catching up to him were not problems; John was taller than anyone he’d seen in the satellite corridors.

      “Oh, there you are!” Deckenson exclaimed with asperity as John loomed up beside him. He reached up and took a firm grip on the right cuff of John’s orange flight suit. “Don’t wander off again. I’m trying to explain our position to you, and why this must be handled so delicately.”

      The small man’s grip on his cuff annoyed John, but he didn’t shake it off. Part of why Mariner was his first option was because he could adapt to new customs, even within his own species. And this casual physical familiarity seemed to be the current custom. Everywhere, people clung to one another as they hurried down the corridors. Trios and quartets, all gripping hands or clothing as they bustled along, were not uncommon. Huddles of people cuddled on benches as they talked. So he tolerated Deckenson’s grip and tried not to put any emotional tags on it. Male/male bonding had also been unpopular last time he was here, but that, too, seemed to have changed. Or perhaps it was only that every time John docked somewhere, it seemed that the prepubes looked more asexual. He knew Deckenson was a male only because his secretary had referred to him as “him” when John had been waiting to see him.

      He looked down on his escort as Deckenson hustled him along. At least the smaller man was trotting; John’s longer legs matched his stride effortlessly. Deckenson’s hair was long and pale and flounced with every step he took. Looking down on it made John feel like a giant in contrast to Deckenson’s fine-boned stature. He lifted a hand to his own scalp and ruffled up the scant growth of dark hair on it. Shaving the scalp and treating the follicles with inhibitor was a standard procedure before entering Waitsleep. His hair was as long as it ever got, and would soon be stripped back to bare scalp again; that is, if his negotiations with Deckenson went well, and he contracted a mission for the Evangeline.

      For the hundredth time, he wished Norwich had renewed their shipping contract. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what had gone wrong. “Sorry. Our company no longer has any need for your services. We’ll be happy to supply you with an excellent reference.” John hadn’t even got past their outer offices. And that was it. No explanations. The only thing he could come up with was that someone had undercut his price. But no other Beastship in port had the vast cargo capacity that Evangeline had. She was practically the only “lifeboat” left unmodified since evacuation days. He couldn’t figure it out, and it was keeping him from concentrating on his dealings with Earth Affirmed.

      Not that he especially wanted to concentrate on them. Earth Affirmed had a reputation among Beastship captains, and it wasn’t good. In a word, they were crackpots. Always stepping on the Conservancy’s toes, always pushing to the limits of the law. Fines, warnings, and cargo seizures seemed to follow in the wake of any deals with them. Earth Affirmed itself had too much funding to feel much of the Conservancy’s displeasure. So when their high-handed ways needled the Conservancy badly enough, the Conservancy’s СКАЧАТЬ