Ringclimber

Chapter 17 - Bad Dreams Revealed

Sharon stirs in the darkness.

Like an avalanche floating in glass, the rings are a fume of dust streams and glittering boulders. The suited figures are crosses of light on Sharon's command visor.

She watches as it happens. A small fragment, maybe three meters across, is rolling his way; he pivots on it in the normal fashion --

Another fragment, flushed from stability by a collision, slips across her view. Suddenly, his image is gone.

"Kyle!" she screams.

She sits up suddenly, and the net heaves beneath her. A faint glow fills the spaces between the leaves of the wallplants. She feels her heart pounding.

In a moment, she has regained her composure. Just another damn dream.

She unhooks the net and drifts up into the room. Time for milk. Time to think.

The kitchen lights as she enters, still strange, but welcoming. She pops a bulb from the wall cabinet. It is cool as she sips at it.

"Face it," she mutters. "You're afraid it'll happen again."

She pushes back her floating sleep-mussed hair. That she is afraid of another death is no surprise. The surprise is the realization that Kyle Trafton has never been far from her mind, and that her dream had transparently substituted Kyle for Rael.

"Not very subtle," she mutters. Or is it Rael for Kyle?

She desperately wants to prove to herself that she is not to blame for Rael's death. And yet, is the desire is a trap that will focus chance on another accident?

There is something else behind all of this, too. Her undeniable attraction to Kyle. But it is too soon after her failure with Phil. How can she know what she really feels, now? The breakup calls into question even the possibility of a final and stable relationship.

Unless she is to give up climbing, leave space.

"Not likely."

She slides the bulb into a disposal. Sleep reaches for her, again, and she yawns.

There is no decision, only more knowledge. But it is enough for now. She pushes off, determined back to her sleep and new dreams.

"I find this hard to accept," Sharon snaps, exasperated.

Anne looks away, embarrassed. Pat watches, curious. Erin is placating.

"Can't we at least give it a try?" she asks. "We've still got three weeks? Let him make some practice runs with us, see how he works out. After all, think of the advantage."

"He doesn't want to give us that advantage, Erin. He wants to trade for it. But his price is too high... ah, I don't know." She put her head down in her hands. She looks up and at each face in turn. "What do you guys think about this?" she asks Anne and Pat.

Pat frowns. Anne sighs.

Pat speaks up, lifting her chin a fraction: "It is a chance to make things safer. But I'd rather not push anything. We'll do well, no matter logistics." Under stress, her faint accent emerges.

Anne's mouth quirks nervously. No one but she knows how important Sharon's friendship is to her. She needs to protect the friendship, and she needs to protect the concealment of its meaning -- she cannot protect both, easily. "Oh, I don't care. I mean -- look, whatever you want. Yeah, it might be a little safer. But who cares? We can do it, anyway. Oh, never mind. Look, what do I know about this kind of decision?"

Sharon has a faint, perplexed smile. "Well, don't just blurt it out."

There is light laughter. Everyone is embarrassed, except Erin, who still looks fierce above her laughing mouth.

Sharon wonders if she is making sense. These women are the best. They are her friends. Even now, when they seem to have doubts, they will defer to her experience and judgement. It means she has to be right in her decision, because they are giving their complete trust. It means she has to know, for certain, that she is making the right decision for the right reasons.

She shakes her head.

"I'll think about it some more." she delays.

But actually, she has thought about nothing else.

Damn it. Damn them. Damn him!

Everything was going fine. Now I have to make this damn decision. If I take him, the closeness on the team could be destroyed. If I don't, and things go wrong, it could be because we don't have the maps.

And if something happens to him?

She clings to the wall, shaking. She remembers making love to Rael; his smell, the smooth contours of his climber's muscles, his accent as he whispered to her.

There is a tear that trembles briefly on her skin before it breaks away into the room.

Her voice is a menacing whisper. "Kyle, we're going to give this a try. I'll be straight with you, here, while we're alone, because I don't want dissension on the team. I don't like your style, holding out on the safety of my team just to get a slot. But I've known you for years. I saved your ass when I never wanted to step into the Rings again. Things didn't look too good in there, from my point of view."

He smiles easily. He has won. "Listen, you wanted to go back into the Rings so bad you could taste it. Besides, how could I succeed? You'd never forgive me if I did it without you."

For a second she looks as if she has been struck in the face. Then it penetrates. Her expression transitions from disapproval through a sneer, to a genuine smile. Then she laughs.

"You're pushing your luck, but you may be - may be - damn right. But you know that. All right, let's get in there and talk to the rest. But remember," she sobers quickly, "If you're not good enough, you're out. And I decide."

She swings past him into the conference room.

There are no beautiful days in space. The days are identical and endless.

But it is a beautiful day for training.

From the moment the lock slides open onto the unwinking stars, Sharon feels a certain integration in her movement, as if each breath is a single moment fully connected to the next, clean and pure. Her eyes gather the symbols of her team together on the visor.

There is a new symbol today. Kyle Trafton.

They drift outside the vast walls of the training base, and then they establish contact.

"OK, we're ready. Let's motor on."

They flow in a ragged formation out to the practice area.

The rocks grow slowly on her visor.

Is she resigned to his presence? Will he perform well? She has no answers. She will suspend judgement until the end of the second day. On his first day, he will be nervous. He will probably make more errors. Blame would be a misplaced reaction.

Kyle Trafton is sweating in the perfectly controlled climate of his new suit. He is feeling slightly tired. His mind is filled with images of suit systems mingled with page after page of volumes from the net -- the Arsia climb, Sharon's Orbital Diaries... He had forced himself to sleep for five hours.

I'm not at my best today, he thinks.

But he activates his prosthetics and runs through the checklists as they approach the nest. He tries to remember every motion he had learned in his gym at home over months of practice. He wonders what the others are thinking.

The prep room is filled with the sound of clasps being slipped, and hydraulics seeking equilibrium.

There is the sound of exultation.

"That was great!" Pat grins. "Hey, Kyle, you did great for a first day."

He smiles, shyly, lifting the vast helmet dome, "Thanks, Pat." He can't keep his glance from sliding to Sharon. She nods. "A good start, Kyle."

Anne grips his shoulder, briefly, on her way past.

"Hey listen," he says, "Can I take you guys out to Tiller's?"

Sharon feels dubious, but she shrugs. Then she realizes. He is trying to form the bonds, quickly. "Sure, sounds good."

"Yeah, let's go," Pat says. "We'll have a great time. They've always got a band down there, and it blasts."

Anne laughs. "Well, I'm supposed to be catching up on work, but this sounds like fun."

Trafton feels a strange warmth, a pause in his breath. He exhales in a moment, but keeps the warmth.

It is a good start.

They laugh at the end of the story.

Trafton ventures in. "My favorite was back at the beginning of the Beltmap II project. It took me five years. I was downfabing processors every six months."

"Home fact?" Pat asks, interest crinkling the corners of her eyes.

"Oh, yeah. I was fifteen, still living with my parents, picking up what I could doing contract work for Allis on their 38D android. But I was making my own autofilmers with some of the research money, and bootlegging my own VonNeumans."

"I've worked with thirty-eights," Anne remarks in surprise. "We used them as theatre assistants. I had one we called Clicker. It actually was a little funny."

Trafton grins. "You don't know what a compliment that is."

"I do," Sharon replies.

He is startled, because she has been exceptionally silent all night, almost brooding as she looked out the window, elbows high, fists under her chin and the secret scar, only occasionally glancing at them during the better stories.

She doesn't look grim now, but her smile has a raggedness under it. A sheaf of auburn bang is streaked across her forehead, and under it her eyes are watching him. But her mouth has that intense tightness that has broken out to become a momentary smile, like something from her past, revealing itself as a symbol. What is it? he wonders.

"How's that?" he asks, drawing on his smoke.

Marvellously, she glances away -- he realizes she is embarrassed. "Oh, I've read my share of programs. The 38D schema has some interesting constraint hierarchies."

"Hey, I didn't know you were a programmer!"

He thinks she might have blushed in the dimness.

"I'm not really. I just... dabble."

Erin chuckles. "She was a consultant on the Eiger suit presentation system designs. Primary presentation designer for the Magister, and the Zeus. She programs her own animation systems for training sessions. Oh, she just dabbles. That's right, bloody right. How much money from the Glistar Proscenium last year, Lazlo?"

Sharon laughs. "You've caught me out."

"So what's your area?" Trafton asks, feeling the surprise and the buzz marching in unison through his mind.

"Human factors," she replies, with an edge to her voice. "I'm not so mathematically oriented. The psychology and the graphic design elements of interfaces are the things I've always liked."

His eyes are wide with a tight focus on flashing sequences of memory. They stir suddenly, back to her. "Too bad I didn't have you around for the map interface design." He feels a faint flush at the back of his neck as he realizes all the compromises he had made in the interface. "You'll... probably find the design a bit clumsy." He thinks of the bracing, clean displays of his new Zeus. So, she had been the one who had made them that way. It is odd to think of her thought embodied in those intuitive, anticipatory displays.

Hard to believe she's thirty-five, he thinks, until he looks at her face, laughing at a joke from Erin. Hard to believe she's that old. If I didn't know how much she's done, and.. how much I apparently don't know...

He realizes he is becoming interested in pursuing her. He is... intrigued.

There had been occasional time for women in his life, though mostly he lives like a monk among his machines. more fascinated by them than by any person he has ever met. Until now. Again.

He isn't sure he knows enough to follow through on his desire. But he will learn as quickly as possible, and be cautious. There isn't going to be much opportunity for intimacy on this trip. And he feels a little like he is sticking his hand out toward a very sharp, very dangerous machine.

The container drifts above the icy moonlet, a slash of white against the stars. They grip the cables and inertia drags at them while the faint hiss of air drones into their lungs. They cling to the moonlet, and the container bobs like an unwieldy kite. Suddenly, in a moment of unbalanced stress, it swings, bucks, and Sharon calls release.

She shakes her head, watching as it drifts slowly up to the stars. "That's not going to work. We'll have to find another way." She turns to Kyle. "You see? It's not just the maps."

He smiles. It is almost a victory. "I should have known."

A shuttle, gleaming delta, slips overhead, its running lights flaring and dimming, following the container as it spirals slowly toward Saturn. The team powers back to the bus.

The bus rises into the void and the Rings withdraw, condensing into a vast plate, threaded with veins of rock, the jet streams of moons that will never be. It glitters like sand, a slow shifting of light. To Sharon, it falls away for ages, becoming vaster, and, only after a long breath, finally smaller. Perhaps she thinks she sees a blue speck in the softly shifting litter. It is just a trick of the eye. An eye, which, for a moment, seems to have a lash caught in it.

She feels herself focusing inward, marshalling energies dimly felt into a sharper, cohesive image of goals, of actions and reactions, of personalities and integrations. She feels herself wanting to reach out to the team, to know they are there too, but, of course, everyone is exhausted and resting. She smiles ruefully.

Anne steps past in the narrow aisle. "Checking the tanks," she explains.

Sharon nods curtly and turns back to the window. Anne bites her lip and turns hesitantly away.

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