Gord shook his head and spread his hands to indicate the sack of bones that was his world. "If
that's true, you're crazy. Why come back?" Rees called, "Because I need your help…"
13
On clouds of steam the plate ship swam toward the Belt. Sheen and Grye stood at the entrance to the Quartermaster's and watched it approach with its cargo of Boneys. Sheen felt dread build up in her, and she shuddered.
She turned to Grye. When the Scientist had first been exiled here by the Raft he had been quite portly, Sheen remembered; now the skin hung from his bones in folds, as if emptied of substance. He caught her studying him. He shifted his drink bowl from hand to hand and dropped his eyes.
Sheen laughed. "I believe you're blushing."
"I'm sorry."
"Look, you've got to lighten up. You're one of us now, remember. Here we are, all humans together, the past behind us. It's a new world. Right?"
He flinched. "I'm sorry…"
"Stop saying that."
"It's just that it's hard to forget the hundreds of shifts we have had to endure since coming here." His voice was mild, but somewhere buried in there was a spark of true bitterness. "Ask Roch if the past is behind us. Ask Cipse." Now Sheen felt her own face redden. Reluctantly she recalled her own hatred for the exiles, how she had willingly allowed their cruel treatment to continue. A hot shame coursed through her. Now that Rees had changed the perspective — given the whole race, it seemed, a new goal — such actions seemed worse than contemptible.
With an effort she forced herself to speak. "If it means anything, I'm sorry."
He didn't reply.
For some moments they stood in awkward silence. Grye's posture softened a little, as if he felt a little more comfortable in her company.
"Well," Sheen said briskly, "at least Jame isn't barring you from the Quartermaster's any more."
"We should be grateful for small mercies." He took a sip from his bowl and sighed. "Not so small, maybe…" He indicated the approaching plate. "You miners do seem to have accepted us a lot more easily since the first Boneys arrived."
"I can understand that. Perhaps the presence of the Boneys shows the rest of us how much we have in common."
"Yes."
The Belt's rotation carried the Quartermaster's beneath the approaching plate once again. Sheen could see that the little craft carried three Boneys, two men and a woman. They were all squat and broad, and they wore battered tunics provided by the Belt folk. Sheen had heard legends of what they chose to wear on their home worldlet… She found herself shuddering again.
The Belt was being used as a way station between the Bone world and the Raft; Boneys traveling to the Raft would stay here for a few shifts before departing on a supply tree. At any one time there was, Sheen reminded herself, only a handful of Boneys scattered around the Belt… but most miners felt that handful was too many.
The Boneys stared down at her, thick jaws gaping. One of the men caught Sheen's eye. He winked at her and rolled his hips suggestively. She found her food rising to her throat; but she held his stare until the plate had passed over the Belt's narrow horizon. "I wish I could believe we need those people," she muttered.
Grye shrugged. "They are human beings. And, according to Rees, they didn't choose the way they live. They have just tried to survive, as we all must do… Anyway, we might not need them. Our work with the Moles on the star kernel is proceeding well."
"Really?"
Grye leaned closer, more confident now that the conversation had moved onto a topic he knew about. "You understand what we're trying to do down there?"
"Vaguely…"
"You see, if Rees's gravitational slingshot idea is going to work we will have to drop the Raft onto a precise trajectory around the Core. The asymptotic direction is highly sensitive to the initial conditions—"
She held up her hands. "You'd better stick to words of one syllable. Or less."
"I'm sorry. We're going into a tight orbit, very close to the Core. The closer we pass, the more our path will be twisted around the Core. But the differences for a small deviation are dramatic. You have to imagine a pencil of neighboring trajectories approaching the Core. As they round the singularity they fan out, like unraveling fibers; and so a small error could give the Raft a final direction very different from the one we want."
"I understand… I think. But it doesn't make much difference, surely? You're aiming at a whole nebula, a target thousands of miles wide."
"Yes, but it's a long way away. It's quite a precise piece of marksmanship. And if we miss, by even a few miles, we could end up sailing into empty, airless space, on without end…"
"So how is the Mole helping?"
"What we need to do is work out all the trajectories in that pencil, so we can figure out how to approach the Core. It takes us hours to work the results by hand — work which, apparently, was performed by slavelike machines for the original Crew. It was Rees who had the idea of using the Mole brains."
Sheen pulled a face. "It would be."
"He argued that the Moles must once have been flying machines. And if you look closely you can see where the rockets, fins and so on must have fitted. So, argued Rees, the Moles must understand orbital dynamics, to some extent. We tried putting our problems to a Mole. It took hours of question-and-answer down there on the kernel surface… but at last we started getting usable results. Now the Mole provides concise answers, and we're proceeding quickly."
She nodded, juggling her drink. "Impressive. And you're sure of the quality of the results?"
He seemed to bridle a little. "As sure as we can be. We've checked samples against hand calculations. But none of us are experts in this particular field." His voice hardened again. "Our Chief Navigator was Cipse, you see."
She could think of no reply. She drained the last of her globe. "Well, look, Grye, I think it's time I—"
"Now, then, where can old Quid take a drink around here?»
The voice was low and sly. She turned, startled, and found herself looking down at a wide, wrinkled face; a grin revealed rotten stumps of teeth, and black eyes traveled over her body. She couldn't help but shrink away from the Boney. Vaguely she was aware of Grye quailing beside her. "What… do you want?"
The Boney stroked a finely carved spear of bone. His eyes widened in mock surprise. "Why, darling, I've only just arrived, and what kind of welcome is that? Eh? Now that we're all friends together…" He took a step closer. "You'll like old Quid when you get to know him—"
She stood her ground and let her disgust show in her face. "You come any nearer to me and I'll break your bloody arm."
He laughed evenly. "I'd be interested to see you try, darling. Remember I grew to my fine stature in high-gee… not this baby-soft micro gravity you have here. You're muscled very attractively; but I bet your bones are as brittle as dead leaves." He looked at her acutely. "Surprised to find old Quid using phrases like 'micro gravity,' girl? I may be a Boney, but I'm not a monster; nor am I stupid." He reached out and grabbed her forearm. His grip was like iron. "It's a lesson you evidently need to learn—"
She thrust at the wall of the Quartermaster's with both legs and performed a fast back flip, shaking free his hand. When she landed she had a knife in her fist.
He held up his hands with an admiring grin. "All right, all right…" Now Quid turned his gaze on Grye; the Scientist clutched his drink globe to his chest, trembling. "I heard what you were saying," Quid said. "All that stuff about orbits and trajectories… But you won't make it, you know.»