He strode along the ramp leading to a second-story hallway. The interior wall was blank. Doors to the guest apartments opened from the exterior wall. Each end of the hallway led out onto a balcony and exit ramp.
The guesthouse was more pleasant than he expected, and, though it was indeed underground, each room flowed into its own small terrace just beneath the crest of the hill. All the rooms were similar, with one wall of windows. The hillside sloped to a stream and a small grove of trees. The furnishings were Spartan: a futon, a small desk, woven mats on the floor. His shoes crunched on the floor coverings.
To give himself the most privacy, he chose the room next
84 vonda N. Mcintyre
to the most distant exit. He dumped his things, apparently at
random, on the futon, then left to lake a long exploratory walk.
FIoris Brown waited in the transport until someone came along to help her. The excitement of the trip had begun to catch up with her, and she felt tired. She dreaded the return to gravity. Weightlessness was a blessing, easing the aches of lift-off as well as the aches of age that she had suffered for twenty years.
As she waited, she looked out the dorsal port.
The bow of the transport obscured her view of the inhabited cylinder, but the wild cylinder spun slowly in the distance. Even farther away, the furled sail lay waiting for its test deployment. It looked like a huge, tautly twisted silver cable.
A young man dove into the transport, sailed through the aisle, and stopped himself just above her. She smiled at him. Everyone on the transport had been so clean-cut. This was the first person she had seen who dressed in a manner she found familiar and comfortable. He was a big man, with dark skin and hair so black it had blue highlights. He wore ragged blue jeans and a black leather vest; he was clean-shaven but his hair was long, tied back in a ponytail, fanning out behind his head. Despite his youth, sun-squint lines radiated from the comers of his eyes.
"I'm your liaison. Infinity Mendez."
"Hello." She extended her hand. "My name is FIoris Brown."
He took her hand and held it rather than shaking it. His hand completely surrounded her skinny, wrinkled fingers. She felt embarrassed by the gnaried blue veins.
"We don't shake hands much in zero-g, Ms. Brown," he said. "One more force to counteract."
"Please call me FIoris."
He unfastened her seat belts with deft and impatient movements, then turned his back to her. The fringe on his leather vest dangled raggedly.
"Grab your stuff and grab hold," he said.
The fastenings stuck. She fumbled at the net.
He made a peculiar motion of his hands and shoulders that STARFARERS 8 5
caused him to rotate toward her. Without comment, he unfastened the net, stuck it under his arm, and presented her with his fringe again. She wound her hands in the cut leather. It felt warm and slippery. He gathered his strength, like an animal about to leap.
She was afraid he would wrench out her arms, but he pushed off carefully and glided with surprising smoothness
between the seats of the transport, drawing her after him.
They were the last people to leave the passenger compartment. Even the waiting room had cleared out.
"How are you on hills?" Infinity asked.
"Slow," she said.
"Okay." He took her to an elevator. "Hold on, and keep your feet near the floor.''
He pointed to one surface, which FIoris would not necessarily have chosen as the floor except for the orientation of the grasps and the painted outlines of footprints.
"This'll feel weird. Something to do with the spin. You need a physicist to explain it, but you get used to it. Down," he said to the elevator. It complied.
At first she thought he must have told her the wrong surface to keep her feet near, for she felt a force drawing her toward the surface of the elevator at her back. Gradually, as the elevator slid toward the floor of the cylinder, the force slid, too, pulling from a more and more horizontal orientation till it fell and acted like gravity, staying steady and "down."
The elevator stopped.
"Most folks don't come this way," Infinity said. He set off toward the bright end of the tunnel.
FIoris stepped out of the elevator. She stumbled. Strange how she could have gotten so used to weightlessness in two days. She steadied herself and followed Infinity Mendez, trying to keep up.
Returning to gravity was not as hard as she had feared. Starfarer's seven-tenths g made walking easier than back on earth.
She stepped cautiously out into the cylinder, into fresh cool air. She looked around, then up. For a moment she shrank back, as if the whole incredible construction might collapse upon her. Pictures failed to reproduce the feeling of observing one's world from the inside, from above. FIoris felt as
8 6 vonda N. Mdntyre
she imagined a fifteenth-century explorer might have, had he crossed the equator and discovered the people on the other side really did walk upside down on the far side of the world. She stepped gingerly out of the tunnel, crossed the semicircle of rock foam at its base, and stood on the new grass.
She glanced at her liaison.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Not many old people on board Starfarer," he said. "Not as old as you, anyway. 1 hardly know anybody who's old."
She tried not to be offended. She wondered how many
other people on board Starfarer had grown up in space, in a
society that was missing the entire eldest generation.
"Don't you have grandparents back on earth?"
"Somewhere. 1 don't know. Come on." Carrying her things, he strode off across a bright green lawn that lay between rougher fields. His unshod feet barely marked the grass. She followed, wondering if she, too, should take off her shoes. When she glanced back, the tender new blades had sprung back from his tread, but she had left marks on the grass and on the ground.
He had already crossed half the field. She gave up trying to match his speed; it was impossible. Instead, she walked at her own pace. She wondered if the people on board Starfarer would be able to accept her limitations.
Her limitations were one of the reasons for her being here:
to help people remember the variety of human beings.
Infinity turned and watched her from a distance.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing," she said.
"Then why are you going so slow?"
"This is as fast as I can go."
"Oh."
She hoped he would come back and help her, but he simply waited, watching with puzzlement rather than impatience.
When she reached him, she wrapped her thin fingers around his elbow before he could stride off and outdistance her.
Though his forehead furrowed when she took his arm, he tolerated the touch.
Floris found it astonishing to walk inside a starship in the same way she would walk through a meadow. She tried to
STARFARERS 8 7
remember the last time she had walked through a meadow.
She had been living in the city for many years.
The starship seemed empty. Occasionally she would see someone at a distance, but Infinity took her to the next meadow, a rougher, wilder one, and after that she saw no other people.
Floris kept up as long as she could. When she was young she loved to take long walks. She hated to admit that even in low gravity she no longer could do it. Finally she let go of Infinity's arm and sank down on a boulder with a sound of distress and exhaustion.
"I'm going to get you a cart."
Floris remained silent until her heartbeat steadied. "You said it wasn't very far. But we're in wilderness! Where are the people?" Above, on the other side of the starship, there were tracks and paths, streams and buildings, and the move-