Before breakfast—bleakly alert, even though I didn’t really feel as if I’d had a good night’s sleep—I visited Kolding and got a fresh update on the repair schedule.
“Two, three days,” he said.
“It was a day last night.”
Kolding shrugged. “You’ve got a problem with the service, find someone else to fix your ship.”
Then he stuck his little finger into the corner of his mouth and began to dig between his teeth.
“Nice to see someone who really enjoys his work,” I said.
I left Kolding before my mood worsened too much, making my way to a different part of the station.
Greta had suggested we meet for breakfast and catch up on old times. She was there when I arrived, sitting at a table in an “outdoor” terrace, under a red-and-white-striped canopy, sipping orange juice. Above us was a dome several hundred metres wide, projecting a cloudless holographic sky. It had the hard, enamelled blue of midsummer.
“How’s the hotel?” she asked after I’d ordered a coffee from the waiter.
“Not bad. No one seems very keen on conversation, though. Is it me or does that place have all the cheery ambience of a sinking ocean liner?”
“It’s just this place,” Greta said. “Everyone who comes here is pissed off about it. Either they got transferred here and they’re pissed off about that, or they ended up here by a routing error and they’re pissed off about that instead. Take your pick.”
“No one’s happy?”
“Only the ones who know they’re getting out of here soon.”
“Would that include you?”
“No,” she said. “I’m more or less stuck here. But I’m OK about it. I guess I’m the exception that proves the rule.”
The waiters were glass mannequins, the kind that had been fashionable in the core worlds about twenty years ago. One of them placed a croissant in front of me, then poured scalding black coffee into my cup.
“Well, it’s good to see you,” I said.
“You too, Thom.” Greta finished her orange juice and then took a corner of my croissant for herself, without asking. “I heard you got married.”
“Yes.”
“Well? Aren’t you going to tell me about her?”
I drank some of my coffee. “Her name’s Katerina.”
“Nice name.”
“She works in the department of bioremediation on Kagawa.”
“Kids?” Greta asked.
“Not yet. It wouldn’t be easy, the amount of time we both spend away from home.”
“Mm.” She had a mouthful of croissant. “But one day you might think about it.”
“Nothing’s ruled out,” I said. As flattered as I was that she was taking such an interest in me, the surgical precision of her questions left me slightly uncomfortable. There was no thrust and parry; no fishing for information. That kind of directness unnerved. But at least it allowed me to ask the same questions. “What about you, then?”
“Nothing very exciting. I got married a year or so after I last saw you. A man called Marcel.”
“Marcel,” I said, ruminatively, as if the name had cosmic significance. “Well, I’m happy for you. I take it he’s here, too?”
“No. Our work took us in different directions. We’re still married, but…” Greta left the sentence hanging.
“It can’t be easy,” I said.
“If it was meant to work, we’d have found a way. Anyway, don’t feel too sorry for either of us. We’ve both got our work. I wouldn’t say I was any less happy than the last time we met.”
“Well, that’s good,” I said.
Greta leaned over and touched my hand. Her fingernails were midnight black with a blue sheen.
“Look. This is really presumptuous of me. It’s one thing asking to meet up for breakfast. It would have been rude not to. But how would you like to meet again later? It’s really nice to eat here in the evening. They turn down the lights. The view through the dome is really something.”
I looked up into that endless holographic sky.
“I thought it was faked.”
“Oh, it is,” she said. “But don’t let that spoil it for you.”
I SETTLED IN front of the camera and started speaking.
“Katerina,” I said. “Hello. I hope you’re all right. By now I hope someone from the company will have been in touch. If they haven’t, I’m pretty sure you’ll have made your own enquiries. I’m not sure what they told you, but I promise you that we’re safe and sound and that we’re coming home. I’m calling from somewhere called Saumlaki Station, a repair facility on the edge of Schedar sector. It’s not much to look at: just a warren of tunnels and centrifuges dug into a pitch-black, D-type asteroid, about half a light-year from the nearest star. The only reason it’s here at all is because there happens to be an aperture next door. That’s how we got here in the first place. Somehow or other Blue Goose took a wrong turn in the network, what they call a routing error. The Goose came in last night, local time, and I’ve been in a hotel since then. I didn’t call last night because I was too tired and disorientated after coming out of the tank, and I didn’t know how long we were going to be here. Seemed better to wait until morning, when we’d have a better idea of the damage to the ship. It’s nothing serious—just a few bits and pieces buckled during the transit—but it means we’re going to be here for another couple of days. Kolding—he’s the repair chief—says three at the most. By the time we get back on course, however, we’ll be about forty days behind schedule.”
I paused, eyeing the incrementing cost indicator. Before I sat down in the booth I always had an eloquent and economical speech queued up in my head, one that conveyed exactly what needed to be said, with the measure and grace of a soliloquy. But my mind always dried up as soon as I opened my mouth, and instead of an actor I ended up sounding like a small-time thief, concocting some fumbling alibi in the presence of quick-witted interrogators.
I smiled awkwardly and continued: “It kills me to think this message is going to take so long to get to you. But if there’s a silver lining it’s that I won’t be far behind it. By the time you get this, I should be home only a couple of days later. So don’t waste money replying to this, because by the time you get it I’ll already have left Saumlaki Station. Just stay where you are and I promise I’ll be home soon.”
That was it. There was nothing more I needed to say, other than: “I miss you.” Delivered after a moment’s pause, I meant it to sound emphatic. But when I replayed the recording it sounded more like an afterthought.
I could have recorded it again, but I doubted that I would have been any happier. Instead I just committed the existing message for transmission and wondered how long it would have to wait before going on its way. Since it seemed unlikely that there was a vast flow of commerce in and out of Saumlaki, our ship might be the first suitable outbound vessel.
I emerged from the booth. For some reason I felt guilty, as if I had been in some way neglectful. It took me a while before I realized what was playing on my mind. I’d told Katerina about Saumlaki Station. I’d even told her about Kolding and the damage to the Blue Goose. But I hadn’t told her about Greta.
IT’S NOT WORKING with Suzy.