Ramis had another two hours before the lightaxis came on for the morning period. Two hours to traverse about five kilometers of the Aguinaldo’s interior circumference … in the dark. Others twice his age could not claim having Jumped all the way around not even in the light.
He kept his eyes open wide as he flew across the weightless space, hoping they had sufficiently adapted to the dark; but without the danger, it wouldn’t be worth doing.
He remembered one night in the Philippine Islands, when his older brother Salita had driven him home down a winding mountain road.
“Watch this,” Salita had said, and punched the button that shut off the car lights.
Instantly plunged into the night, Ramis had watched the emptiness around them, the treacherous curves now invisible as the car continued without slowing.
“See how the road glistens?” Fascinated, Salita had accelerated the car. Ramis had gripped the door, but felt some of his brother’s feverish excitement. Salita had clicked the lights back on just in time to round a sharp curve. He had shown no sign of uneasiness, but kept smiling in silence as he drove on….
The trampoline surface of the Aguinaldo’s bouncer should be coming up now. Straining to see, Ramis caught a glint of light reflected off the circumpond’s surface, demarcating his path. Although one hundred meters square, the bouncer seemed no more than a speck in the Sibuyan Sea. And if he missed it, he’d get a dunking, which at the speed he traveled might not be better than slamming into the colony’s wall. His entire body felt like a coiled weapon, tense, every cell alive with energy. His lips were curled back in a startling grin.
As he roared toward the bouncer, Ramis bent his knees and shot a blast of air to adjust his momentum. The bouncer grew larger below him. Three, two, one …. now! He hit the elastic surface and pushed off as hard as he could. He felt his leg muscles cramp from the sudden effort. The bouncer hurled him back into the air. Ramis spun his arms, furiously trying to keep from tumbling.
Finally stable, Ramis exhausted his compressed-air can. He let the empty can float out, fastened to his side by a short cord, as he rummaged through his pouch for another container. The cool, damp wind of his motion rippled his shirtsleeves.
The lightaxis waited out there in the dark, somewhere across his path. The meter-thick array of fiberoptics and titanium structure would smash him like a bug if he hit it.
He had contemplated bringing a small flashlight, but that would have encumbered his hands—and it would also have made the Jump too easy. This wasn’t supposed to be safe. Now Ramis felt fear building up; the adrenaline roared through his veins. He drew a deep breath. It seemed so much like flying, floating free, drifting … and he didn’t need to be terrified of looking down because he couldn’t see anything in the dark.
Ramis squinted, trying to discern a shadow of the light axis, anything that might warn him. He counted to himself, still searching, as the wind whistled in his ears. He thought he could gauge his speed and direction by the force with which he had pushed off from the bouncer.
When several heartbeats had passed, Ramis relaxed, then turned his concentration on anticipating the next bouncer on the opposite side. He tried to figure in his head the optimum angle at which he’d need to hit it.
Ramis twisted in the air, orienting his feet toward the onrushing wall—
He spotted the lightaxis directly in his path, a gigantic rod stretched out and ready to snap him in two.
The sail-creature nymphs had all been corralled for the night period, where they could feed at their leisure. He couldn’t count on Sarat helping him this time.
Ramis shot a blast of air toward the lightaxis, then curled his body into a ball to present the smallest possible target. His course altered, but not by much. The thick mass of optical fibers skimmed by within touching distance. He kicked out, pushing his bare feet against the axis and thrusting himself into safer airspace. In the silent blackness he could hear the low thrum of the vibration he had sent into the lightaxis. He emptied the second air canister to slow himself further.
He floated toward the Aguinaldo’s wall at a much safer speed this time. In the darkness, he could barely make out his own location in the air. He checked to make sure he had enough canisters to stop himself from drifting into the rotating deck. He had learned that lesson three years before.
It seemed pointless to finish his circumnavigation now. He was too jittery, and he had lost most of his momentum. The encounter had frightened him more than he had realized at first. He debated if he should tell dato Magsaysay about it.
No, then he would have to admit what he had been trying to do. Against the rules, Jumping in the dark—rules designed out of safety considerations, the dato had always said.
Of course the other children obeyed, like all good Filipino boys and girls. Obeying rules was part of their culture, part of what they had brought up with them from the Islands. And since Ramis was the foster son of the dato—the president of the colony—the others expected him to follow rules better than anyone else. Ramis smirked to himself at the thought. Father Magsaysay did not push him—all the pressure to conform, and to excel, came from within. He could never live up to his parents’ names as great martyred researchers unless he constantly pushed himself, proved that he was better than anyone else.
Ramis always pretended to acquiesce to the rules, to go to his quarters during the dark period when the Aguinaldo engineers louvered the outer mirrors away from the lightaxis port. Then, in the early morning hours, he slipped out to do his Jumps before the mirrors swung back into position again. He was careful. After all, it was against the rules, wasn’t it? And he was the best.
Ramis stretched in the air, taking his time to get to the wall since he had more than an hour before the subjective dawn—
Streaks of light shot through wire-fine fiberoptics as the louvered mirrors opened up. Every few millimeters along the axis, a thousand fiberoptic threads frayed outward to illuminate the ten-kilometer span.
On one end, flares of raw sunlight bounced off outer mirrors into the transparent viewing segments. The shielding iris over the viewport end dilated, opening to a vista of space with the Earth hanging off to one side. With the sudden view, it seemed as if the entire end of the colony had sheared off.
Panicked, Ramis squinted at his chronometer in the glare. The lightaxis was on a full hour early. He twisted himself around, trying to see if anyone had noticed him in the air. Luckily, he had drifted far enough away from the circumpond that he wouldn’t draw suspicion to himself.
Sounds of shouting came from the inner surface below him; muffled PA announcements echoed in the living units. There was no broadcast over the general colony loudspeakers, Ramis realized, because everyone should have been inside.
A crowd of people began to gather near the curving viewport end, pressing their faces against the transparent segments, climbing up the rungs on the wall to get a better vantage point. Ramis emptied another can of air to increase his speed, then turned around in the air, squirting short bursts in the opposite direction to slow him again as he reached the crowd.
Ramis spread his palms to absorb momentum against the wall. Bouncing, he reached a rung, then hand-walked himself down to one of the elevator platforms. It took him to a scattered group of people who stood looking out into space. Sobs mixed with angry shouting.
“What is it?” he yelled, looking for a face he recognized. “What is happening?”