Ringclimber

Chapter 16 - Getting The Maps

Kyle Trafton drifts, enmeshed in his machines. They line the walls around him, huge screens, luminous, connected by the thin filaments of optical links. Experimental programs color the thin sheets of the displays with their debugging traces. He frowns, not looking at them. His thought is ragged, but not disorganized.

The docking signal plays briefly. He looks around, disturbed by the harsh sound, collecting himself. Then he turns to face the tunnel, unwilling to greet his visitor, unable to postpone something he is unwilling to admit will be painful. His pain, after all, is no one's business but his own.

Sharon steps into the alcove of Trafton's private asteroid. She has never been to his home before, and is startled by its sleek design. The airlock shaft runs the core of the asteroid, lit by thin streaks of red, green, and blue that follow the length. There are no webs.

Sharon raises an eyebrow. Well, she is as expert as Kyle Trafton. But that is no excuse for discourtesy.

"Kyle!" she shouts. She hears the faint click of the opening intercom.

"Sharon. I'll be right over."

A few moments pass. At the far end of the corridor, a door opens, casting a faint light across the shaft. Trafton emerges, and with a deft motion, he is flying at an astonishing rate toward her. Then, as suddenly, he brakes and flips on the flange at the airlock end of the corridor. Then he lets himself float slowly across the room. She smiles at him as he stands on the wall, grinning madly beneath his flaming topknot.

"Ho, Sharon. Welcome to Jet Stream."

"Hot place you've got here, sideways man."

"Thanks," he says, then, less formal. "Yeah. Thanks. You've never been here, all the time we've known about each other."

"Then again, you've never been to my place, either."

"Gravity. Hate the stuff, though I have to go down sometimes. Well. Right. Well, come on, no need to stand in the doorway." He springs back up the shaft. She laughs, eyes wild, and switches orientation to launch up corridor. The lines of light spiral past.

His voice is a quiet echo as she looks around the display walls. "It's... new equipment. Well. It's actually something kind of special."

"You're set up for neural simulations of rock stream behavior, aren't you?"

He looks at her, startled.

"In fact," she continues, "that's what you've been doing all along, isn't it? That's how you sell such good delta-v to the producers - and why your transports are always running below everybody else's cost. And on schedule at that." For a moment a glint of surprise escapes her eyes; she hadn't intended to say it so soon. But the sight of the equipment and the interfaces betray her.

He grips the doorway, his muscles taut, his face silent and locked like a vault. He can't lie, but he can't speak, either. There is a moment when he looks around the room, with the look on his face like the look of a man who could see the vast causes and effects of his systems -- systems the size of the Rings.

"Yeah." he says simply.

He isn't used to it at first, the sound of her voice in the room; the faint scent of a perfume in a place that has only energics, connectors, and recycled air. Her presence, her size, measured on the scale of the machines he has known all of his adult life -- more than he expects. He can see in the light of the displays how her neck is smoothly muscled, and how her face is smooth, but faintly softened with a fine, soft aura of pale hairs. Her hands, her lips, smiling as she speaks. He hopes she won't notice the severity of his observation, because he can't bear to be dependent on her.

Then he realizes what she is saying.

"I need your help, Kyle. I knew you had these simulations. They could make all the difference."

He feels himself shivering with a cold moisture imagined.

"I heard you were going."

"I am."

He shakes his head. "I think you also told me I was crazy to consider it."

She smiles like a woman freezing to death. "I'm sure I did. Maybe I was right."

He shivers again, and wraps his arms around his chest, head aslant. "Alvarez almost died. He kept pleading with me. But even that was better than when he fell asleep. I kept thinking he might be dead. I kept checking." He shot a look at her. "I think..."

"It would have been easier to die." She finishes for him. "It would have been. It's always harder to live than die." Her eyes narrows fiercely. "But it's worth it. Worth it enough to risk dying rather than running away..." She leans toward him, and her voice becomes quiet and throaty. "It's the contest that shows us how much it means to live."

He knows he can never help her, when she thinks that way.

Training over the next few weeks, just Pat and Anne at first, working on the rudiments.

There is a boulder field in the Trojans of Jupiter; the two friends meet at Almathea and fly to the Castle Rock Lookout in Anne's new company runabout, the Arsia Mons.

The boulders are like a sea in three dimensions, glinting with collision facets as they shift slowly, forming knots of varying density that recede like waves against the blackness.

"The idea," Pat begins, as they look out from the flight deck, "is to travel from end to end, with a minimum of fuel loss."

"I know," Anne replies. "We could fly right through, changing course to avoid collisions every time, but the fuel penalty would be too high. So we use a combination of hot flying and gymnastics. Dynamic gymnastics. Well, Pat, I've been working on the null G, and I'm better at it, but the dynamic part is right out there. It's got me gripped."

"Sure, why not? But you'll like it. Because it is the avalanche experience. And I have a feeling you'd like to get that back into your life."

Anne laughs. "Pat, you're talking about something that still gives me nightmares. Of course I want to repeat the experience. On purpose. Sure. Well, let's go."

Sharon sits at the window of the liner's shuttle, lying back in the darkness. Her head turns to watch as an asteroid glint in the distance, but her mind remains on its raging course.

He refused. How could he refuse!

The look in his eyes had made her feel a strange excitement. Perhaps it is a sign that she will eventually persuade him.

Pat razors along the bifur. Then the pivot on a hellroller -- two axes. Moments later, brake and spur; her heel skitters the rock, then thrusters on to through a sudden reach. Out. She pauses, and watches Anne slide like a fish to skirt the cortex.

"Deeper!" she calls. "You've got to get in there and take the risk."

Anne's pant hisses the channel. "I can't... yet."

"C'mon, you can. Now."

Anne's suit faces her across a kilometer. Pat focuses, and the helmet brings the image up close.

"Anne. You can do the center line. Go for it!"

She hears a faint sigh.

"That's not going to work, Anne. You have to have positive attitude, ten hours a day, for four hundred days. There is not going to be a single day where you can wake up and not feel like going on."

Anne weighs that. It is hard to think when she is so tired. But she knows Pat is right. This is what she signed up for. The real challenge isn't the action. It is the endurance. This isn't a climb.

"All right, Pat. I'm coming through, again."

Erin and Sharon join in a graceful hug amid the bustle of the concourse.

"We're always meeting in spaceports," Erin complains, drifting back.

Sharon laughs. Her skin crinkles faintly at the corners of her eyes, and her look is direct. "Don't we, though."

Erin grips her at arms length. "How'd it go?"

Sharon shakes her head, and suddenly she feels a burst of sweat cross her jaw. "He refused."

"Bloody shit." But Erin sees something else in her friend's bitter disappointment. Something she decides, wisely, to keep to herself.

"We'll do fine without it, Erin."

"'Course we will."

"Well, look, I tried. I don't want them going any more than you do."

"It wasn't good enough. They're going to use the best forecasts they can get, and do the drops incrementally."

Trafton shrugs. "They're going to lose over fifty percent of them by my estimate. Why don't they just give up?"

"I don't know. But all that's left is for me to work on Liam." Gordon disconnects and buries his head in his hands.

"Gordon, I need to get this clear. You want me to disallow their request?" Liam M'Butu sits forward on his chair, Niagara roaring softly beyond the window. "I can't do that. What the hell makes you think I would?"

"She's my wife, Liam. I can't turn her down. And I can't let her go."

"So you want me to protect you from this."

Gordon wipes his forehead.

"Gordon, did you ever see Lazlo when she's decided she really wants something?" He sighs. "I'm sorry, Gordon. People are always coming to me and asking me to help them do things that are bad for them. Not that time, not this time. You'll have to decide what you're going to do. If you don't want to sponsor the team, then don't do it. If you don't want Erin to go, say it. But don't try to grease the road with my reputation."

Gordon whispers, "I'm just afraid they're going to die."

"So what do you think?"

"She's trying too hard, but that's natural. I think she likes it, though."

Sharon peers through the glass at the practice area. She turns back to Pat. "How much time is she spending in there?"

"Ten or so."

"Breaks?" She peers back out to follow Anne's graceful movements with a critical eye.

"Every four."

Pat smiles. Sharon isn't frowning. That means good performance.

"I'll want to go out with her tomorrow. Damned if I can't use the practice myself."

"I'll have them get your suit prepped," Pat replies. "I think I'll join in, too, if you don't mind."

It is cool in the prep room, with a faint scent of propellant and electronics. Anne lifts the helmet from the table and lowers it to the collar. It clicks in with a sudden pressure, and the helmet lights with the test displays. She toggles the acknowledgement, and the displays blank down to the small status window at the lower right. The warm, quiet air in the suit relaxes her; its smell is now familiar, comforting, exciting.

Pat's voice enters the helmet, localized to the left. "Anne? Guess who's here?"

Anne laughs. "You are."

"No, I mean it. Sharon's with me. Can you wait a while so we can join you?"

Anne comes instantly alert, her pulse high. "Of course."

"Give us a second."

The door unlatches. The two women float into the chamber, handling the suits carefully behind. Sharon hangs her rakish white, red, and orange suit; it splits suddenly, waiting for her. Pat mounts her rounded blue suit beside; the shell opens like a flower. Then Sharon turns to Anne.

For a moment, her eyes flick automatically over the suit, as she inventories every detail. Then she looks back at Anne and their eyes meet. Sharon's eyes are faintly proud, but her expression is one of restrained intensity, held by the set of her jaw, the line of her neck. "You're looking good, Anne."

Anne releases a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Thanks... you too."

Sharon snorts a quiet laugh of recognition. There is the equality she wanted to see so badly. "Thanks. You mind if I get in a bit of a workout, too? Of course, we'll talk about how you're doing, later, but I just want to get acquainted with your moves and style, right now. Okay?"

Pat glances over from her suit, briefly worried.

"Oh, sure," Anne replies. "Listen, I hope you'll show me a lot. Tell me a lot. I need everything I can get. I mean, I like this, but it's all so new, isn't it?"

Pat turns back to her suit, hiding her expression.

"I'll show you everything I know," Sharon promises. "Then you'll show me some things, I'm sure." She reaches back over her shoulder and pulls herself into the suit. The shell slips shut around her. Pat is already stirring within her suit as she tests the systems. Anne starts her double checks.

They warm up with patterns, flowing gracefully on thruster impulses. The challenge is for each to handle the motion of their obstacles, while holding a course near one other. It is easy to become disoriented with only the images on the helmet for guidance. But they emerge on the far side with only minimal separation.

"Looks good," Sharon says.

Zero energy runs are next. A single thruster impulse sends them in. They used the prosthetics and their muscles to rebound from the orbiting rocks, pressing, pushing, rolling, and they spin into the depths of the practice area. This time, the separation on the far side is much greater, and it takes them minutes of flight to regroup.

"That needs more work," Sharon sounds determined. "Let's run another set before we head in. Remember, try to alternate spins so your corrections are more accurate." They turn back to the rocks, and with a gentle thrust, they are back on course.

"So where's Erin?" Anne asks.

"Oh, she's off visiting Gordon."

"Damn you!" Erin yells. "You tried to get Liam to shut us out? I can't believe it."

He is braced in the doorway, face impassive. In the far room, Michel starts to cry.

Finally, he speaks.

"I told you."

She sighs, her energy drained. Her feelings for him had vanished. It is as if he is a stranger.

"Why?"

He doesn't want to explain it. It is too futile, too weak... the reasoning is wrong.

"I... wanted to make sure you'd stay home... with Michel... and me. I'm" his eyes swung around the room, avoiding, "worried you might not come back this time."

She feels the anger trickling back into her face.

"You," she says, "have no right to make me do what you want. We're partners -- at least somewhat independent partners. I have my right to do what I need for myself."

He glares back, suddenly fiery, though he had wanted to be calm and silent. "And I have the right to stop you, if I can, damn it! Okay? Just be careful. Watch out. Okay?"

Michel's crying reaches a crescendo.

She feels tears in her eyes. "Yeah, bloody right I will, you bastard." She floats forward to embrace him in a sudden excess of emotion. "Let me go take care of that damn crying," she whispers hoarsely in his ear.

Sharon looks at her gaunt face in the mirror wall. So much time in so many gravity fields. That face, now relaxed in the absence of gravity, still retains the beginnings of lines at the edges of the lips, at the corners of the eyes. A face maybe too thin, maybe too driven, like a brass nail in mahogany.

"I'm not waiting, this time, Sharon. I can't spend my life waiting."

"I don't blame you."

The surprising thing is how little she had felt.

Maybe, she thought, what I need is no one. Just myself. I just have to take on my role. Just be a gypsy, a nomad.

She turns up the lights.

Nomad of space! she thinks. Just what I need, melodrama. She laughs.

"Why be so tragic?" she mutters. "I'm doing what I want. This is going to be my best."

My best.

She feels her hands tingling as the renewed spirit flows through her wrists.

But it is so lonely, sometimes. She has her friends. Still, there is more. More that she needs. A feeling that is a completion. A feeling like what she had with Rael. A feeling she had wanted so badly with Phil that she had been unable to see the horrible gaps between what she wanted and what they had.

The accomplishments are real, they are hers, and she is proud of them.

But if only she had someone to hold, to be able to tell how he made her feel... someone to express this incredible potential she has for joy. Someone who she wouldn't have to lead. Just a partner, for dancing.

The walls are gone, hidden behind the images of trees. Kyle Trafton relaxes amidst the foliage-dappled light of his recreation room. He is busy having second thoughts.

But second thoughts anger him, so he extends his arms and continues his exercise, slowly at first, until some impulse, some vision, kicks him into an intense sequence of violent motions.

His breath comes harder, and his muscles warm. He stops, panting, sweat beads on his ribs. Then he begins the motions again, pushing and kicking against the articulated metal framework. Images of leaves gleam against the pipes, but that is not the image in his mind. The image in his mind is the silhouetted face of a beautiful woman, lined with the light from his displays. And behind that is some kind of stark terror, fabulous rolling fields of dust, and rock, and glinting ice, endlessly shifting. An extraordinary effort. A temptation.

They are training daily now, using exercise to combat deterioration. The prosthetics take over from the muscles only when the stress overcomes the thresholds -- and the thresholds become higher every day. Their world becomes the suit; the suit, the world. The smells, the windows sliding across the helmet displays; the targets rolling in, the actions, reactions, and motions -- these are reflexes, environments, integrated into a complex planning function that gradually learns to lean back and watch, plotting quietly and ceaselessly under the pressure of the rushing targets that glint and wheel in the absolute silence, absolute cold, and absolute distance.

There are times when they curl into armored fear or exhaustion, and the suits ring with the impact; they shudder with inertia; they scream and cry in the shells; they listens in stunned silence, as the ice grates, and the sheets of particles blast them.

But it is just training.

Sharon drifts in her room, and the faint wisp curls from the end of her smoke. She is smiling. It is a smile that can't be seen -- it is too private. A tautness of the corners of the mouth, a raging excitement tinged with gathering surety, tempered with an edge of anxiety. She knows what it is going to feel like.

Erin cradles her son to her breast. She watches his face, his intensity, and she recognizes herself in that. But her emotions are not unmixed. Even as Gordon leans over and rubs her shoulders, she is out on the rocks, and home - both at once; the mixture is almost enough to send her into tears.

Pat clings to the pole and the miners drink to her health in an ancient tradition. She is laughing and blushing, all at once. In that moment, she feels some of the walls of negotiation, of partitioning cultures, and all of her own reserve falling away.

Anne finishes the last checklist, and shuts down the suit. She pats it on the shoulder. It had done her well during this solo practice session, and she is ready for sleep. Until tomorrow.

Sharon comes awake to the sound of the doorchime, struggling for a moment in the net. The dream echoes of an alarm die away into the innocuous sound of the chime. She curses her own imagination, muttering as she frees herself from the net.

"Who is it?" she asks the doorcom, voice harsh and hoarse.

"Kyle Trafton."

She comes fully awake. What?

"I'm sorry, Kyle, but I was asleep. Ring me back in..." she checks her watch. "Two hours, OK?"

"... All right." He seems reluctant. "But listen, I've got to talk to you, OK? Just find an hour or so for me, OK?"

What could he want? Maybe he decided to let me have the maps?

"Of course I will, Kyle. Just let me get a couple more hours of sleep."

"I'll call," he promises.

He hangs by the door for a few moments longer.

She tries to go back to sleep, rolling uneasily in the net every few minutes, as the position becomes unsatisfying, and sleep eludes her. Finally she mutters, "All right." She unlashes the net, and floats to the closet. Wrapped in a sleek white dayrobe, she stands at the mirrorwall.

That's an older woman in the mirror, she thinks. Older than she looks, too. She leans close to peer at her eyes. They are tired, and her face is gaunt from diet and exertion. The arms are good, though. She lets the dayrobe slip away writhing into the air. There is a steel cord of muscle that slips under skin as she moves. The muscle draws a line that crosses her shoulders and joins the contours of her breasts to the architecture of her ribcage and taut waist. Best shape I've been in for a while.

She sprays her face and wipes slowly. She looks again, and wonders why she feels this is some kind of ritual.

It'll be a negotiation. He's going to want something. But what?

She calls up data on the expedition finance from her pad on the wall beside the tabouret.

She smiles. Unless he wants some outrageous amount, we've got enough.

It can't be that bad.

He'd stress the value of the information, she'd counter that they could get by without it, but allow that it might be useful augmentation. He'd want to protect his programs. She'd let him suggest encoding, or using his own computers remotely. That way he wouldn't think she was too eager.

She slides into a metallically patterned jumpsuit clinging to the wall. She hangs awkwardly a moment, admiring the contrast of the metal against her still-tanned skin, and smiles.

She slides a metal bracelet onto her wrist. Her fingers run gently across the rim of the alloy, polishing. She flicks out the light and drifts into the living quarters, waiting. What will his price be?

"Why, I want to go with you," he replies.

The lounge is quiet this early, and they have the stars to themselves in the faint light.

She isn't prepared for this, and she feels a sudden panic, swiftly suppressed by laughter.

"Do you think that's a wise price to ask?"

His taut face creases in a smile.

"Now that's the kind of thing I wouldn't expect to hear from you."

She frowns. "Yeah, well, really Kyle, haven't you had enough?"

This time he laughs. "Enough? I got a taste. Enough to whet my appetite. C'mon, what does it cost you?" He is uncertain, too. Does he really want this? It is halfway between the strong impulse of terror, and a violent longing.

"Kyle, I'm really not able to agree to this. We have a tight team, right now."

"I know how you feel about that..."

"Then you know that this is really too late for us to consider you. Look, we'll offer you money, enough to make it worthwhile. And we'll let you use execution encryption, or your own secure machines. How about that?" But she is suddenly defensive.

"No, I've decided, already. I want to go. That or nothing. Look, Sharon, I have a lot to contribute, and I'm not hard to get along with. You have a good team, and I have the skills and the maps that can make your logistics and navigation a lot easier. Just give me a chance."

Someone else had asked that once, she remembers.

She stands to leave. "Look Kyle, you had your chance and we had to go in to get you. I'm sorry."

She finds herself hurrying down the corridor, hair streaming behind. For a moment, she realizes she is panicking, and then she slows herself with a conscious effort. For a moment, she hangs braked in a strap, mouth pulled back tightly against her teeth.

Helmets release, lift, then held in hand. Erin sighs. Sharon leans back against the rack, eyes closed.

"Not too good," Erin observes. "You were way off today."

"All right," Sharon snaps.

Erin's hands fly up. "Give me a break."

Sharon's face slides into a frown.

"Yeah, I know."

"Bad day?"

"Trafton's out here to see me."

"Oh?"

"He offered the maps. On one condition."

"Which is?"

"He wanted to go."

"And?"

"Well, I said no." She looks over at Erin. "What's the matter?" Erin leans back and says nothing. "You think I should have said 'yes'?" Sharon asks.

Erin rubs her eyes. She is very tired, and not certain enough to directly raise the issue. She looks out of the corner of her eye.

"I don't know... You sure you're just not holding the rescue against him?"

Sharon feels herself about to rage, but she checks herself, so tired it is an effort that exhausts her. "Sure I am. We've got three weeks left. That's not enough time to put him into the team."

Erin makes a face. "I suppose." Her pause continues while she considers her knees. Finally she looks carefully off into space. "Still, maybe we should think about it. Those maps would make the drops so bloody safe..."

"I know. But it's not enough."

There is a long hall on the equator, glass to space. Vines cloak the inner wall, stretched and guided across the roof, to embrace the window frames. Trafton waits by the window in the dimness, watching the silent, unmoving stars.

Pat frowns. "He has a lot of experience. I've dealt with him before. He can be... difficult. Still, I've known those who were harder to deal with. Some of us, some of the time, for instance. It's just strong personality syndrome. Trafton made business out of nothing. There were no schedules until he started, and even now..."

"That's why I'm raising the issue. I'm not sure Sharon's making the best decision." Erin continues.

The conference room is silent for a moment.

Anne feels uneasy. "I don't think we should be talking about this without her."

Erin gestures, her unruly hair floating away like a banner. "She's already said she doesn't want to take him. And she's climbing leader. But I'm responsible, too. I can't be sure that this is best, when I bloody know we need those maps."

"We have maps of our own," Pat offers.

"Not as good, though." Anne says. Pat looks at her, surprised.

"I want to be honest about this," Anne continues, in response. "Trafton has a well-deserved reputation. He knows more about the dynamics of the Belt than anyone else. Even I know that, and I'm a doctor. That's what made him so rich. What he knows about Saturn, well, who knows? It didn't help his team any. Maybe it could help us. But I think Sharon should have the last word."

Pat crosses her arms. "She should. But don't forget Rael. I'm sure Sharon hasn't been able to. Maybe we can change her mind. But maybe we shouldn't."

Erin frowns. "Look, can we just talk to her about it? Ask her to reconsider. And for her sake, please, don't mention Rael, all right?"

Content, Layout, and Images Copyright © 1999 by Mark Cashman except where indicated (NASA photos)