Timothy Zahn: Cascade Point

As you may or may not know, I have recently come out of semiretirement to serve on the Board of Directors of TranStar Enterprises, headquartered here in Nairobi. With excellent contacts both in Africa and in the so-called Black Colony chain, our passenger load is expanding rapidly, and we are constantly on the search for experienced and resourceful pilots we can entrust them to. The news reports of your recent close call brought you to my mind again after all these years, and I thought you might be interested in discussing—

A knock on the door interrupted my reading. "Come in," I called, looking up.

It was Alana. "Hi, Pall, how are you doing?" she asked, walking over to the bed and giving me a brief once-over. In one hand she carried a slender plastic portfolio.

"Bored silly," I told her. "I think I'm about ready to check out—they've finished all the standard tests without finding anything, and I'm tired of lying around while they dream up new ones."

"What a shame," she said with mock sorrow. "And after I brought you all this reading material, too." She hefted the portfolio.

"What is it, your resignation?" I asked, trying to keep my voice light. There was no point making this any more painful for either of us than necessary.

But she just frowned. "Don't be silly. It's a whole batch of new contracts I've picked up for us in the past few days. Some really good ones, too, from name corporations. I think people are starting to see what a really good carrier we are."

I snorted. "Aside from the thirty-six or whatever penalty clauses we invoked on this trip?"

"Oh, that's all in here too. The Swedish Institute's not even going to put up a fight—they're paying off everything, including your hospital bills and the patrol's rescue fee. Probably figured Lanton's glitch was going to make them look bad enough without them trying to chisel us out of damages too." She hesitated, and an odd expression flickered across her face. "Were you really expecting me to jump ship?"

"I was about eighty percent sure," I said, fudging my estimate down about nineteen points. "After all, this is where Rik Bradley's going to be, and you... rather like him. Don't you?"

She shrugged. "I don't know what I feel for him, to be perfectly honest. I like him, sure—like him a lot. But my life's out there"—she gestured skyward—"and I don't think I can give that up for anyone. At least, not for him."

"You could take a leave of absence," I told her, feeling like a prize fool but determined to give her every possible option. "Maybe once you spend some real time on a planet, you'd find you like it."

"And maybe I wouldn't," she countered. "And when I decided I'd had enough, where would the Dancer be? Probably nowhere I'd ever be able to get to you." She looked me straight in the eye and all traces of levity vanished from her voice. "Like I told you once before, Pall, I can't afford to lose any of my friends."

I took a deep breath and carefully let it out. "Well. I guess that's all settled. Good. Now, if you'll be kind enough to tell the nurse out by the monitor station that I'm signing out, I'll get dressed and we'll get back to the ship."

"Great. It'll be good to have you back." Smiling, she disappeared out into the corridor.

Carefully, I got my clothes out of the closet and began putting them on, an odd mixture of victory and defeat settling into my stomach. Alana was staying with the Dancer, which was certainly what I'd wanted... and yet, I couldn't help but feel that in some ways her decision was more a default than a real, active choice. Was she coming back because she wanted to, or merely because we were a safer course than the set of unknowns that Bradley offered? If the latter, it was clear that her old burns weren't entirely healed; that she still had a ways—maybe a long ways—to go. But that was all right. I may not have the talent she did for healing bruised souls, but if time and distance were what she needed, the Dancer and I could supply her with both.

I was just sealing my boots when Alana returned. "Finished? Good. They're getting your release ready, so let's go. Don't forget your letter," she added, pointing at Lord Hendrik's CompNote.

"This? It's nothing," I told her, crumpling it up and tossing it toward the wastebasket. "Just some junk mail from an old admirer."

—

Six months later, on our third point out from Prima, a new image of myself in liner captain's white appeared in my cascade pattern. I looked at it long and hard... and then did something I'd never done before for such an image.

I wished it lots of luck.

Afterword

"Cascade Point" started out as a raw idea—the visual effects of the Colloton Drive—plus a simple statement of the story problem— the ship getting lost through some sort of malfunction. That was it; and for me that's not a heck of a lot to start with. It was one of the few stories I've done where I was willing to just jump in without any real idea of where it was going or even where it was ultimately going to end up. Somewhere along the line the details worked themselves out, and the characters fleshed themselves out, and the story found its proper conclusion... and apparently it was the right conclusion, because the fans at the 1984 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles voted it a Hugo Award for best novella of the year. There is no greater reward for a writer than to know the readers enjoy his work; that reward, not the Hugo itself, is the memory this story will always hold for me.

And with that final bit of philosophy we find ourselves at the end of the book. From "The Dreamsender" to "Return to the Fold" you've seen five years of style development as I've slowly grown from semi-rank amateur to at least journeyman status in this field, and from wading through all these afterwords you've perhaps gotten some insight into the view I have of those same five years. I hope you've found both journeys worthwhile.

"The Giftie Gie Us" was first published in Analog, July, 1981 issue. Copyright © 1981 by Timothy Zahn.

"The Dreamsender" was first published in Analog, July, 1980 issue. Copyright © 1980 by Timothy Zahn.

"The Energy Crisis of 2215" was first published in Amazing Stories, March, 1981 issue. Copyright © 1981 by Timothy Zahn.

"Return to the Fold" was first published in in Analog, September, 1984 issue. Copyright© 1984 by Timothy Zahn.

"The Shadows of Evening" was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March, 1983 issue. Copyright © 1983 by Timothy Zahn.

"The Challenge" was first published in Space Gamer, December, 1980 issue. Copyright © 1980 by Timothy Zahn.

"The Cassandra" was first published in Analog, November, 1983 issue. Copyright © 1983 by Timothy Zahn.

"Dragon Pax" was first published in Rigel Science Fiction, Fall, 1982 issue. Copyright © 1982 by Timothy Zahn.

"Job Inaction" was first published in Analog, November, 1981 issue. Copyright © 1981 by Timothy Zahn.

"Teamwork" was first published in Analog, April, 1984 issue. Copyright © 1984 by Timothy Zahn.

"The Final Report on the Lifeline Experiment" was first published in Analog, May, 1983 issue. Copyright © 1983 by Timothy Zahn.

"Cascade Point" was first published in Analog, mid-December, 1983 issue.