Clewell reappeared in the doorway, carrying Rusty. “I hope they don't drown themselves … though anything would be an improvement.”
She looked down at the pipe in her hand, remembering how he had carved it for her during their final days in Borealis. Surprising herself, she began to smile.
Ranger (in transit, Lansing to Demarchy)
+290 kiloseconds
Bird Alyn moved slowly through the green light of the Ranger's hydroponics lab, her frail body twitching with the effort of standing upright in one gravity. She hummed softly, oblivious to discomfort, pulled into the past by the cool constant moistness and the smell of apples, the hum of insect life. Shadow-dapples slid over the tiles, merging and breaking with the drift of canopied leaves, showering sparks of veridian fire over the viscous liquid inside clear, covered vats.
The setting was strangely alien, like everything in the bountiful alien wonderland of this starship. But a fern or a tree were always the same, no matter how gravity or its lack contorted them. They were living things that required her—that rewarded her care and attention with a leaf or a blossom or fruit to give her people life. The only living things that willingly absorbed all the love she could give them, that never turned away from her because she was an ugly, ungainly cripple.…
Bird Alyn drew the dipstick out of another vat, studied the readings, shook it down. She sighed and slid down the vat's side to sit on the floor, massaging her swollen feet. They prickled, with the sluggishness of poor circulation. She leaned back, looking up through the shifting green; imagined she saw the milky translucency of the Lansing shroud and Shadow Jack working as a spinner, instead of the banks of fluorescent lights.
She had counted the kiloseconds, the very seconds of every Lansing day, until Shadow Jack came down to join her for the day's one meal. Silent, moody, filled with futile anger—he was still the one person in her world who responded to her, who pushed out of his own shadowed world each day long enough to show her kindness. Sometimes she wondered whether he was kind out of pity; never caring whether he was. She was simply grateful, because she loved him, and knew that love had no pride.
From childhood she had understood that she would work in the surface gardens; through all of her life she had seen why—that she was different, deformed. Her parents had trained her to use a computer, because they had accepted that she would have to work at a job where the radiation level was high; they had equipped her to work on a ship, to do the best she could for the survival of her world. But beyond that they had withdrawn from her, as people withdraw from a mistake that has ruined their lives, as they withdraw from the victim of a terminal disease.
And she had never questioned her own inferiority, because Materialist philosophy taught her that every individual must accept the responsibility for his own shortcomings. She had gone to work on Lansing's surface almost gladly; glad to escape from the world of normal people, glad to lose herself in the beauty of the gardens, solitary even among her fellow defectives.
And then she had discovered Shadow Jack sitting dazed and frightened in the grass at the entrance to the tunnels.… Shadow Jack, who had grown up used to a normal life of security and acceptance. Who had been told, suddenly, that he was not normal, and cast out into an alien world, ashamed, abandoned. She had comforted him, out of compassion and her own need; his need had bound him to her, and made them friends.
But as they grew older she began to want more than just his friendship; even though she knew that it was wrong, and impossible. On the Lansing surface the mores of the tunnels were distorted by neurosis, or by need, until each person became literally responsible for his own actions, and endured whatever consequences followed. She had seen things that would have appalled her parents, and learned to see that they did no one any harm; to see that that was the only real criterion for what was right or wrong. And there were things that had made her afraid, once she understood them, and grateful that Shadow Jack slept beside her every night in the sweet cool grass or between the sheltering pillars of the abandoned state buildings.
But Shadow Jack would never touch her, never let her ease the anger and helpless resentment that never let him go. And helpless in her own futility, she kept her silence, knowing that it was wrong for a defective to want a husband; impossible, that Shadow Jack could ever love an ugly, clumsy cripple.…
Bird Alyn saw someone draw aside the insect netting and enter the lab, brushing aside grasping shrubs and vines. She struggled to her feet, trying to make the figure into Shadow Jack … heard a woman's voice call softly, “Claire?”
Bird Alyn stood on tiptoe, fading against the flowers in her green shirt and blue jeans. “What?” She teetered and almost dropped the dipstick. She clutched it against her side with her crippled hand. “Oh, Betha.”
Betha stared at her in return; shook her head, bemused and disconcerted.
Bird Alyn smiled, glancing down. “I—I thought it was Shadow Jack. He said he was goin' to come watch me work.…” Her smile collapsed.
”Pappy's got him cornered; he's showing him around up in the shop.” Betha touched a fern, pulled off a yellowed frond, pulling the dead past loose from the present. She looked back, concern showing on her tired, pale face. “Are you sure you want to do this, while we're still at one gee?”
Bird Alyn nodded. “It's all right. I sit down a lot, and just—watch, and smell, and listen. It's so long since I worked in the gardens. Do you mind?”
“No … no. You don't know how much I appreciate it. There's enough work on this ship for seven people. And—Clewell's not as young as he used to be.” The captain's eyes left her, searching the green shadows. “You have the perfect touch, Bird Alyn … I almost took you for a dryad when I came in.”
“What … what's that?”
“An enchanted forest spirit.” Betha smiled.
“Me?” Bird Alyn twisted the dipstick, laughed her embarrassment. “Oh, not me.… These plants take care of themselves, really, it's easy … not like Lansing … they look so different here, so thick and squat.…”
“These?” Betha looked up.
“On Lansing things keep growin' up, they don't know when to quit; it's tricky, the root systems have to go down to bedrock and catch hold … and with the mutations …” Bird Alyn faded, suddenly aware of her own voice.
Betha sat down on a tiled bench, reached out for the strangely shaped thing half-hidden under a fall of vine. “Claire's guitar. Claire used to run hydroponics, and she used to play for the plants. It's a musical instrument,” seeing Bird Alyn's puzzled expression. “We all used to come down here in the evenings, and sing. She used to claim the plants enjoyed the music, and the emotional communion. Of course, Lara would claim it was just the carbon dioxide they wanted … and Sean said it was the hot air.” Her mouth curved wistfully. “And Eric—Eric would say that it was probably a little of everything.…” Her hand rose to her face; Bird Alyn counted four plain golden rings, surprised, before it dropped again.
“How … um, how does it work?” She had known a girl once who had a whistle made from a reed. “The—guitar, I mean.” She leaned back against a heavy wooden shelf, pushed up onto its edge with an effort.