BASE CONFINEMENT FOR ALL DAEDALUS CONSOLE PERSONNEL LIFTED BUT NO RUMORS FROM PERSONNEL OFFICE OF LEAVES. SAW KNUTH, HE SAYS ALL FUTURE INTERVIEWS RESCHEDULED.
OF COURSE I REMEMBER JEANNIE D.
WERHNER
“What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know,” I tell Collette. “Makes me nervous. I’d like to know before we take off. But I don’t think we have a choice about waiting. Wait another hour, maybe.” I honestly don’t know what to do. I know we’ll have to pass a gate on the way out, I have tried to put running it out of my mind. I tell Collette she could always stay. “For what?” she says. “Stay for what?”
They are just opening the Administrative Center at the Tower when I run up, deep in the bowels of Personnel Section, Military Concourse, Flight Assignment, Force 8A—sleepy uniformed clerks unlocking doors and files, switching on machines, arranging their desks. A minute ago I had a terrible scare: down in the lobby I’m certain I saw Mancek, his shoulders slumped with fatigue, I’m certain he didn’t see me. I don’t want to be here long—I’ll have to disappear until something comes through the line. I wonder if I can talk one of the clerks into a discreet call up to the roof garden, perhaps—I don’t want Mancek to see me here. I’m more certain the information about the appeal will have to sit and process here before Taylor sees it.
I have to fill out a tedious form for an inquiry; the yawning clerk who leans over the counter on his elbows to watch me is only eighteen or nineteen. This is taking too long. I look into his slightly glazed, innocent eyes and wonder about an approach. Not money but a favor; he looks decent enough, pink-faced and earnest, to respond.
“Mmmm,” he says as I turn the form around to him. “Appeal. Already filed. You need to enter your local residence… here. And sign line three.”
He laughs at my birth date and says I must have been out on a long one, laughs again. I ask him if he can do a personal favor for me—I need to know the appeal result before SciCom does, it’s a problem with my commanding officer, he’s going to be pissed when he finds out about this and I want to talk to him in case it’s denied.
The boy scratches his head, says, “Hold on. I think we had some stuff come through in the last hour—you know, time lag from the East. I bet nobody’s even picked it up yet.”
He is gone for a minute that seems like forever: 07:33:13… 14… 15. Clerks move papers across their desks in slow motion, I move out of sight of the door, watch the clerk through another wide doorway in the next room reading down a yellow teletype sheet he is picking up from the floor behind the printer.
He saunters back, still looking sleepy. The counter is cold under my hand.
“Voorst. Rawley? Codex 02-292. I mean, Captain, sir. Captain Voorst.”
I look at him and the door at the same time.
“Wanna see for yourself? This is supposed to go through channels, but I don’t see any harm in your looking at it, got a local rider.”
He hands me the tear sheet:
sign category//002
message category//MILITARY ORDERS/MILITARY ORDERS
SUBJECT//LEAVE STATUS, VOORST, RAWLEY, SIGN KEY 0202, FLT VANE ENG CLASS TWO, RANK CAPTAIN
COPIES TO//LOCAL FLIGHT ASSIGNMENT, LASVENUS FLT ASSIGNMENT CENTER, HOUSTON LOCAL SCICOM OFFICE, LASVENUS SCICOM HQ, GUAM BASE
ORIGINATING OFFICE//FLIGHT PERSONNEL ASSIGNMENT, WASHNGTON
ORDERS FOLLOW ORDERS FOLLOW ORDERS FOLLOW ORDERS
APPEAL OF REASSIGNMENT FROM LEAVE TO GUAM SCICOM
STATUS:
APPROVED APPROVED APPROVED
DECISION BASIS/ACCUMULATED LEAVE TIME
ADVISORY//GUAM SCICOM, PERSONNEL OFFICE
PREDICTIVE ATTACHED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES:
VOORST, RAWLEY, TO REMAIN ON LEAVE FOR THIRTY-DAY PERIOD BEGINNING 7-10 ENDING 8-09. ELIGIBILITY FOR LEAVE EXTENSIONS TOTALING 120 DAYS FLT CREW HNDBK 17.442 REV. #2332.
ORDERS END////LOCAL RIDER FOLLOWS LOCAL RIDER FOLLOWS
*********** ADD ADD ADD ADD ADD ADD ADD ADD ADD ADD ADD ADD
********** LOCAL RIDER LOCAL RIDER LOCAL RIDER LOCAL RIDER
COPIES TO//VOORST, RAWLEY
LASVENUS SERVICE CONTROL ALL CODEX PERSONNEL OFF.
ORIGINATING OFFICE//PROGRAM OFFICE, CENTRAL
THEPLEASURETUBE, LASVENUS
VOORST, RAWLEY, RESTORED TO CLASS ONE PRIVILEGES THEPLEASURETUBE FLIGHT 8 LIFTOFF 1100 7-18//SERVICE RESTORED EFF. 0900 7-18.
QUESTIONS CONTACT CENTRAL OFFICE/////////
YOUR PLEASURE IS OUR SERVICE//OUR SERVICE IS YOUR PLEASURE
I scan back through the appeal result, can barely believe my eyes:
APPROVED APPROVED APPROVED
PART III
NAKED SINGULARITY[3]
Chapter 7
Moonloop
Through the window/wall I see the latticework cradle move away, the wisps of preignition float up from beneath the ship.
“He wasn’t angry, then?”
“No, Taylor was. You should have seen him, talking with his teeth clenched. It was Mancek, the one who looks like a farmer, who didn’t say anything; he seemed to enjoy the news in a funny way. I still don’t know what to make of it, exactly. Wish I’d hear from Werhner. Something in me isn’t going to relax until I find out what’s going on at Agana.”
“Just be thankful for good news.” Collette grins, adjusting the last buckle of my liftoff rig, patting my stomach. “The next few days will take your mind off beige uniforms, you’ll see.” She kisses me with wet, big lips.
“What service,” I tease her. I’ve been teasing her because she’s still on the job after all.
She laughs along with me. “Today we celebrate,” she says. “I’ve got a surprise for you once we’re in orbit. And then I’ve already got the whole day planned. Notice anything different?”
I look around the bright cabin, the familiar brown couch, the deep brown rug with its faint hexagonal pattern. Collette’s sagging leather flight bag is stacked alongside the divider to the kitchen/bar; the other velvet lounging chair is reclined as her liftoff rig. “What do you mean?” I ask. The light from the LasVenus trans-port illuminates the Rubens behind her to a glow, warms the soft brown walls. Now I notice a halo around the painting, a rainbow halo.
“Just a drug.” She grins, easing into the lounging chair, strapping in. “We’re going to be high until tomorrow, higher than we are. Consider that an invitation to a party.”
A thunderous shake wallows through the ship, modulates into a sustained roar. The dusty LasVenus pads begin to slip away, low hills and desert form on the horizon to the sound of fine tinkling of equipment in the unit. A gravity grows in my blood, intensifies in the flesh of my forehead, chest, groin—the continent begins to shape itself, receding, and at the very center of the growing weight itself I begin to feel the sweet freedom of flight.
RESIDUAL ITINERARY,
3
=df product of tidally infinite forces manifest within collapsar; condition of irreducibility.