Once they left low earth orbit, her nostalgia dissipated. The transport pilot, showing off the sights, oriented the observation window first toward earth, then toward the moon, then toward the stars. Undimmed by earth's atmosphere, the constellations stunned her. She could imagine the sky a hundred or a thousand or a million years ago, the air free of the pollution of human activities, the galaxy sweeping in a brilliant path from one horizon to the other. Back on earth she had seen the Milky Way as a fuzzy patch of light across the middle sixty degrees of the sky. Out here she knew that if she could see all the way around her, she would see the entire disk of the Milky Way. For the first time she understood why prehistoric people—and even some modern people who ought to know better—could believe that the stars contained esoteric meaning.
Occasionally one or another of the passengers came by and greeted her. She was a curiosity: not the oldest person ever
to travel into space, but the oldest to make a first trip, the first member of the Grandparents in Space program.
One of the benefits of her years was that her lifelong difficulty remembering names and faces could not be ascribed
56 vonda N. Mclntyre
to age. She smiled and nodded and said hello and thanked people for their welcome; but after five or ten she gave up trying to remember any individual.
"Ms. Brown?"
She looked around, seeking the voice.
Someone drifted into her vision from above the level of her head, upside down from her orientation.
"Please call me Floris," she said.
"Thank you. I'm Victoria Fraser MacKenzie. I'm on the faculty of Starfarer. I just wanted to welcome you into space, and see if you needed anything. I could show you around, or help you to your sleeping net."
"I'm not ready to sleep," Floris replied. She found herself tilting her head to try to get the faculty member's face right side up. "I seldom sleep more than a few hours at night."
This was not strictly true, but Floris had occasionally found the claim useful. No one had ever disputed her when she repeated the cliche about old people and sleep. "I'm just going to stay here and watch the stars."
The faculty member smiled. That's interesting, Floris thought, that a smile upside down still looks like a smile, and not like a frown. She had never had occasion to observe this before.
"They're beautiful, aren't they? The whole galaxy as if you could touch it. And in a little while I think Esther is going to orient the transport so we can see Starfarer."
"Esther?"
"She pilots this transport."
"Thank you for your welcome." Floris tried to keep her attention on the young woman speaking to her, but it was hard to talk to someone upside down. Besides, her gaze kept returning to the stars.
"If you need anything, just let me know."
"All right."
Victoria hovered solicitously, protectively, near Floris Brown. She wished she had come right out and said that she had been one of the major proponents of the Grandparents in Space program, arguing that the expedition needed a wider age-mix. Perhaps she could work it subtly into a conversation.
STARFARERS 57
Victoria felt comfortable around Floris Brown. She hoped they would be friends. No one could take the place of Victoria's great-grandmother, but Grangrana refused to apply to the expedition. Victoria would not see her again for at least a year. Probably more than a year. Already Victoria missed her.
But she liked to think of Grangrana living comfortably in the house that Merry had arranged for the partnership to buy.
On the rare occasion that property came up for sale, corporations bought it, not ordinary people. Victoria had never expected her family to own a house. But there it was. It even had some land of its own, away from the city. on the edge of the Vancouver Island wilderness.
Only yesterday she had run up the front stairs of the house for her last visit with Grangrana before the expedition departed.
The door recognized her. Expecting her, it opened. Inside, the air was hot and dry.
"Grangrana?"
She went upstairs. Soft bright tight filled the hallway, spilling through the glass wall separating the corridor from the sun porch. Beyond the windows, Victoria's great-grandmother sat sleeping in her favorite chair.
Victoria entered the room quietly, trying not to wake the eldest member of her extended family. She sat in the other chair and watched Grangrana doze. Heat radiated up at her from the black flagstone tiles. She slid out of her jacket and settled back, content to wait, comfortable despite the oppressive warmth. Grangrana had always welcomed her.
Victoria let he"- surroundings create another memory to take with her on the long trip. Grangrana wore her hair shorter these days than the way Victoria first remembered, still in an iron-gray Afro, but more subdued and easier to care for. Her black skin was smooth except for the ritual scar on her cheek, obtained on a research trip before Victoria was born. Gran-grana could have had the scar removed, but she chose to keep it. She admired the people she had visited; they refused to condescend completely to the modern world- They paid tribute to ancient traditions with a single, elegant facial scar.
Whether they still carried on their new tradition or had been forced to change, Victoria did not know. Their territory
58 vonda N. Mdntyre
had been swallowed up in the chaos of the Mideast Sweep two decades before, almost as an afterthought, a brief southern lunge of the greater wave that overtook the U.S.S.R.
Victoria hoped this house would be a haven for Grangrana, the way Grangrana's small apartment in Vancouver had been a haven for Victoria, for Grangrana's friends and colleagues and former students; even, once in a white, for a member of the group she had lived with in Africa. A few of them had been trapped in the West. They could not legally return to their homes. Victoria's most powerful recollection of them was the dignity with which they bore their grief and displacement.
Gradually they had stopped visiting; gradually even Gran-grana lost contact with them all. She believed they had returned home, no matter what they had to do to get there. No matter what happened to them when they arrived.
"Victoria?"
Victoria started awake. Grangrana stood before her, a little stooped, frailer than six months ago.
"I fell asleep," Victoria said, abashed. The heat and the few minutes' sleep made her groggy.
Grangrana smiled. "So did I."
She touched Victoria's hair, brushing her fingertips across the soft, springy surface. Victoria wore her hair shorter than Grangrana used to, longer than her great-grandmother kept hers now.
"I'm so glad to see you," Grangrana said. "I thought I might not again."
"I know," Victoria said. "I was afraid of that, too."
She stood and hugged her great-grandmother and kissed her cheek.
"I'm still afraid of that, Grangrana. We're going to be gone so long ... "
The house AS rolled into the sun-room.
"Come have tea," Grangrana said.
They sat at the white wrought-iron table in the comer, on spindly white wrought-iron chairs.
"The time will seem longer to you than to me," Grangrana said. "The older I get, the faster time passes. I think we perceive time as a proportion of our lives. A year isn't a large
STARFARERS 5 9
proportion of my life anymore. I think I'll still be here when you get back."
"I hope so. But won't you reconsider coming? Won't you at least apply?'
Grangrana shook her head. "No, I've finished my adventuring. I'll wait here for you to come back to me and tell me all about it. Tell me things now. Are you happy?"