"I'd heard about it, of course. But this was the first time I've seen it— It was . . . exciting."
"Yes," Rydra said.
As they reached the ramp's head, lights again pierced the globe. Ebony and Condor circled in the fighting sphere.
On the sidewalk Brass dropped back, loping on all fours, to Rydra's side. "What about a Slug and a 'latoon?"
"I'd like to get a one-trip platoon if I can."
"Why so green?"
"I want to train them my way. The older groups tend to be too set."
"A one-tri' grou' can be a hell of a 'roblem to disci'line. And inefficient as 'iss, so I've heard. Never been with one myself."
“As long as there're no out and out nuts, I don't care. Besides, if I want one now, I can be surer of getting one by morning if I put my order in at Navy."
Brass nodded. "Your request in yet?"
“I wanted to check with my pilot first and see if you had any preferences."
They were passing a street phone on the corner lamppost. Rydra ducked beneath the plastic hood. A minute later she was saying, "—a platoon for a run toward Specelli scheduled at dawn tomorrow. I know that it's short notice, but I don't need a particularly seasoned group. Even a one trip will do." She looked from under the hood and winked at them. "Fine. I'll call later to get their psyche-indices for customs approval. Yes, I have an Officer with me. Thank you."
She came from under the hood. "Closest way to the Discorporate Sector is through there."
The streets narrowed about them, twisting through one another, deserted. Then a stretch of concrete where metal turrets rose, crossed, and recrossed. Wires webbed them. Pylons of bluish light dropped half shadows.
"Is this . . . ?" the Customs Officer began. Then he was quiet. Walking out, they slowed their steps. Against the darkness red light shot between towers. "What . . . ?"
"Just a transfer. They go all night," Calli explained. Green lightning crackled to their left. "Transfer?"
"It's a quick exchange of energies resulting from the relocation of discorporate states," the Navigator-Two volunteered glibly.
"But I still don't . . ."
They had moved between the pylons now when a flickering coalesced. Silver latticed with red fires glimmered through industrial smog. Three figures formed: women, sequined skeletons glittered toward them, casting hollow eyes.
Kittens clawed the Customs Officer's back, for strut work pylons gleamed behind the apparitional bellies.
"The faces," he whispered. "As soon as you look away, you can't remember what they look like. When you look at them, they look like people, but when you look away—" He caught his breath as another passed.
"You can't remember!" He stared after them.
"Dead?" He shook his head. "You know I've been approving psyche-indices on Transport workers corporate and discorporate for ten years. And I've never been close enough to speak to a discorporate soul; Oh, I've seen pictures and occasionally passed one of the less fantastic on the street. But this . . ."
"There's some jobs"—Calli's voice was as heavy with alcohol as his shoulders with muscle—"Some jobs on a Transport Ship you just can't give to a live human being."
"I know, I know," said the Customs Officer. "So you use dead ones."
"That's right." Calli nodded. "Like the Eye, Ear, and Nose, A live human scanning all that goes on in those hyperstasis frequencies would—well, die first, and go crazy second."
"I do know the theory," the Customs Officer stated sharply.
Calli suddenly cupped the Officer's cheek in his hand and pulled him close to his own pocked face. "You don't know anything. Customs." The tone was of their first exchange in the cafe. "Aw, you hide in your Customs cage, cage hid in the safe gravity of Earth, Earth held firm by the sun, sun fixed headlong toward Vega, all in the predicted tide of this spiral arm—" He gestured across night where the Milky Way would run over a less bright city. "And you never break free!" Suddenly he pushed the little spectacled red head away. "Ehhh! You have nothing to say to me!"
The bereaved navigator caught a guy cable slanting from support to concrete. It twanged. The low note set something loose in the Officer's throat which reached his mouth with the metal taste of outrage.
He would have spat it, but Rydra's copper eyes were now as close to his face as the hostile, pitted visage had been.
She said: "He was part," the words lean, calm, her eyes intent on not losing his, "of a triple, a close, precarious, emotional and sexual relation with two other people. And one of them has just died."
The edge of her tone hued away the bulk of the Officer's anger; but a sliver escaped him: "Perverts!"
Ron put his head to the side, his musculature showing clear the double of hurt and bewilderment. "There're some jobs," he echoed Calli's syntax, "some jobs on a Transport Ship you just can't give to two people alone. The jobs are too complicated."
"I know." Then he thought, I've hurt the boy, too. Calli leaned on a girder. Something else was working in the Officer's mouth.
"You have something to say," Rydra said.
Surprise that she knew prized his lips. He looked from Calli to Ron, back. "I'm sorry for you."
Calli's brows raised, then returned, his expression settling. "I'm sorry for you too."
Brass reared. "There's a transfer conclave about a quarter of a mile down in the medium energy states. That would attract the sort of Eye, Ear and Nose you want for Specelli." He grinned at the Officer through his fangs. "That's one of your illegal sections. The hallucination count goes way u', and some cor'orate egos can't handle it. But most sane 'eo'le don't have any 'roblem."
"If it's illegal, I'd just as soon wait right here," the Customs Officer said. "You can just come back and pick me up. I'll approve their indices then."
Rydra nodded. Calli threw one arm around the waist of the ten-foot pilot, the other around Ron's shoulder. "Come on. Captain, if you want to get your crew by morning."
"If we don't find what we want in an hour, we'll be back anyway," she said.
The Customs Officer watched them move away between the slim towers—
IV
—RECALL FROM broken banks the color of earth breaking into clear pool water her eyes; the figure blinking her eyes and speaking.
He said: "An Officer, ma'am. A Customs Officer."
Surprise at her witty return, at first hurt, then amusement following. He answered: "About ten years. How long have you been discorporate?"
And she moved closer to him, her hair holding the recalled odor of. And the sharp transparent features reminding him of. More words from her, now, making him laugh.
"Yes, this is all very new to me. Doesn't the whole vagueness with which everything seems to happen get you, too?"
Again her answer, both coaxing and witty.
"Well, yes," he smiled. "For you I guess it wouldn't be."
Her ease infected him; and either she reached playfully to take his hand or he amazed himself by taking hers, and the apparition as real beneath his fingers with skin as smooth as.
"You're so forward. I mean I'm not used to young women just coming up and . . . behaving like this."
Her charming logic again explained it away, making him feel her near, nearer, nearing, and her banter made music, a phrase from.
"Well, yes, you're discorporate, so it doesn't matter. But—"
And her interruption was a word or a kiss or a frown or a smile, sending not humor through him now, but luminous amazement, fear, excitement; and the feel of her shape against his completely new. He fought to retain it, pattern of pressure and pressure, fading as the pressure itself faded. She was going away. She was laughing like, as though, as if. He stood, losing her laughter, replaced by whirled bewilderment in the tides of his consciousness fading—