Элизабет Мун - Moon Flights

Peka came back to the shuttle docking bay three hours later, when Hal called. She had walked out to the ship with her mother, then stopped on the way back for a bosonburger at Higg’s. Now, as she nodded over the changes Hal and his crew had made, and entered them all in the main stats file, she felt better than she had all day.

Not an accident. Ladders of causation fell from the windows of the burning tenement, step after step leading to safety… her mind might be going up in smoke, but she could still escape. Acts have consequences. Accidents don’t just happen.

When Einos Skirados showed up in her office the next day, with a box of her favorite candy and a bouquet of apologies, her first reaction was the old familiar one that had made her so happy to go out with him.

She looked at the bright brown eyes, the sleek dark hair, the composed face; her mind brought up his resume. Here was her accident, if she lied to herself; she had the hormones, and plenty of them.

“Not only accidents have causes,” her mother had pointed out as she left. “So do the best plans ever laid, the ones that come to good ends.”

She smiled at Einos Skirados with no more than professional courtesy. “No, thank you,” she said. “I already have plans for this evening.”

And so she did. Somewhere in her future loomed the fortunate accident she wanted… and she had better start causing it.

It was his first world. On the way out, resting in the half-doze of transfer, he imagined many things. A fire world, all volcanic and rough, showers of sparks against a night sky, clouds of steam and ash, firelit. Or a water world like Pella, with all the endless quivering shades of color, the blues and silvers, purples and strange greens. It might have mountains like Lelare, a purple sky, six moons or none, rings like golden Saturn’s, rainbowed arcs… he saw against the screen of his mind these and other worlds, some seen once in pictures, others created from his mind’s store of images.

All he knew for certain was that no one yet had set foot on it. Only two probes had been there: the robot survey, which had noted it as a possible, and the manned scout, which had given it a 6.7, a marginal rating, out of 10. He didn’t know why the rating was 6.7; he knew he might not have understood it even if they’d told him. It had been approved, and then assigned, and he—just out of the Academy, just past his thesis—he had been given that assignment

He half-heard something in his chamber, felt a pressure on his arm, hands touching his face. He struggled to open his eyes, and heard the quiet voice he had heard so far ago.

“Please, sir, wait a moment. It’s all right; you’re rousing now. Take a deep breath first… good. Another. Move your right hand, please…”

He felt his fingers shift, stiffly at first, then more easily. More than anything else, the reported stiffening had frightened him: his hands were his life. But they’d explained, insisted that it was no more than missing a single week of practice, not the three years of the voyage. He moved his left hand, then tried again with his eyelids. This time they opened, and he had no trouble focussing on the medical attendant. Gray hair, brown eyes, the same quiet face that had put him in his couch back at the station.

He wanted to ask if they had arrived, and felt childish in that desire. The attendant smiled, helped him sit and swing his legs over the edge of the couch. “Your first meal, sir; it’s important that you eat before standing.” He pushed over a sliding table with a tray of food. “Do you recall your name, sir?”

Until he was asked, he hadn’t thought of it. For a moment the concept of his name eluded him. Then he remembered, clearly and completely. “Of course,” he said. “Georges Mantenon. Musician-graduate.”

“Yes, sir.” The attendant fastened a strap around his left arm while he ate with his right. “I must check this, just a moment.”

Mantenon paid no attention to the attendant; he knew the man wouldn’t answer medical questions, and even if he did it would tell him nothing. He had an appetite; the Class Three food tasted the same as always. His hands felt better every moment. He held his left arm still until the medical attendant was through with it, and went on eating.

When he’d finished, the other man showed him to a suite of rooms: bath, workroom, sitting room. Along one wall of the workroom was the keyboard/pedal complex of a Meirinhoff, the same model he’d used for his thesis. He made himself shower and change before climbing into it. He adjusted the seat, the angle of keyboard and pedal banks, the length of cord from the headpiece to output generator. Then he touched the keys, lightly, and felt/heard/saw the Meirinhoff awake.

His fingers danced along the keyboard, touching section controls as well as pitch/resonance indicators. Woodwinds, brass—he felt festive, suddenly aware that he’d been afraid, even during the transfer dreams. He toed a percussion pedal, tipped it off. Wrong blend, wrong tempo. For a long moment he struggled with the pedals, then remembered what was wrong. He’d put on exactly what the attendant laid out, which meant he had on slippers.

Slippers! He scraped them off with his toes, and kicked them out of the way. His toes, surgically freed at the metatarsal, and held for walking by special pads in his shoes (not that he walked much), spread wide. Years of practice had given him amazing reach. He tried again for the percussion he wanted, toed cymbal on delay, pitched the snares down a tone, added the bright dash of the triangle. He played with balance, shifting fingers and toes minutely until the sound in the phones matched that in his head. Then he paused, hands and feet still.

His head dipped, so that the subvoc microphone touched the angle of his larynx. His hands lifted briefly, his toes curled up. Then he reached out, curling his tongue up in his mouth to let the clean sound come free, and put the Meirinhoff on full audio/record. He could feel, through his fingers, his feet, his seat, the wave of sound, the wave he designed, drove, controlled, shaped, and finally, after two glorious minutes of play, subdued. He lay back in his seat, fully relaxed, and tapped the system off audio.

“Sir?” The voice brought him upright, the short cord of the headset dragging at his ears.

“Klarge!” It was the worst oath he knew, and he meant it. No one, no one, not even a full professor, would walk in on someone who had just composed. And for someone who had had no outlet for years—! He pulled off the headset and glared at the person standing in the doorway. Not the medical attendant; that blue uniform meant ship’s crew, and the decorative braid all over the front probably meant some rank. He forced a smile to his face. “Sorry,” he said, achieving an icy tone. “It is not usual to interrupt a composition.”

“I didn’t,” the person pointed out. He realized she was a woman. “You had finished, I believe; I did not speak until you had turned off the audio.”

Mantenon frowned. “Nonetheless—”

“The captain wishes to speak with you,” said the woman. “About projecting all that without warning.”

“Projecting—?” He was confused. “All I did was compose—that’s my job.”

“You had that thing on external audio,” she said, “and you nearly blasted our ears out with it. You’re not supposed to be hooked up to the ship’s speakers without permission.”

“Was I?” He remembered, now he came to think of it, something the attendant had said about the bank of switches near the console. He had been so glad to see the Meirinhoff, he hadn’t paid much attention. He gave a quick glance at the recording timer: two minutes fifteen seconds—quite a long time, actually, if they didn’t know it was coming or how to interrupt it.