~ 1 ~
Lucie had saved for over a year to pay for a short tour of the known worlds. She had planned and researched, and gone without. So the cramped appointments of the Saint James interspace liner caught her by surprise. Apparently a journey from Darwin to Charlton City was an ordinary event for everyone else. A work-a-day thing requiring bland décor and an absence of comfort.
Lucie realized she had been building up this interstellar flight in her mind, making it far more significant and in need of luxury appointments and fanfare only because it was her first interstellar journey.
The way everyone shuffled along the aisles with barely any conversation, let alone excited chatter, picking seats and stowing their packs beneath, made her think they did this every other day. And perhaps they did. She was a very new Varkan and, as she was constantly reminded, having once run an entire city had taught her nothing useful about humans.
She found a seat, jammed between a large man travelling on his own and a woman shepherding three small children, who all sounded tired and fractious.
This was what her hard-earned savings had paid for? Well, not just this flight, for this was the first of five flights, plus threenights’ accommodation at each point on the journey. From Darwin to Charlton City, the original home of the Varkans; to Nicia, the sea world, in the Sunita system; on to Cathain, and the ruins of the Ivory City; then Shanterry and the tech cities and the Varkan implant workshops; then back home to Darwin.
Lucie gripped her hands together and tried to stop staring at everything, and also tried to ignore the small foot kicking her shin.
Most of the seats in the big room were full when a chime sounded over the P.A. system. Everyone still standing picked up their pace and settled in a chair. The floor and Lucie’s seat shivered and she felt the ship rise. She was pressed into her seat with a giant invisible hand as the ship’s rate of ascent increased.
Her heart zoomed. They were leaving!
The ship rose for what felt like hours, but the digital side of her mind said it was much shorter interval. Eight minutes, thirty-seven seconds. There were also an additional twenty-nine milliseconds, but including them was a new Varkan thing, so she ignored them.
The walls showed no windows or ports where Lucie could view Darwin falling away beneath them, or the slow change from blue sky to indigo, then the blackness of space and the stars. She couldn’t see Darwin’s moon, which would be somewhere ahead of the ship.
The gravity pushing her into her seat eased to normal. The ship had stopped rising.
It held still for a moment or two. Everyone else in the cabin looked bored, but Lucie’s heart kicked up a notch, for now the ship was out of the gravity well of the planet. Now was when the pilot, on the bridge somewhere at the front of the ship, would pull the ship through Interspace. This was an extra dimension that only Varkans—digital sentients using human bodies—could access. Not all Varkans could find Interspace and use it. It tookexperience, and a deep understanding of space. It took more understanding than Lucie, as a new Varkan, could muster. It didn’t matter that she had been acquiring knowledge for over a hundred years.
It also didn’t matter that she had been sentient for nineteen of those years. She had only been a Varkan for ten years, and didn’t have the range of flesh-and-blood experiences and exposure to space travel that would teach her how to reach Interspace.
It didn’t help that she had been a city-mind, not a ship-mind. Her experience with space travel consisted of a lot of research and this flight.
So far.
But this was more than exciting enough. Lucie held her breath, waiting for the jump.
The ship shivered beneath her feet. Lucie felt what seemed to be a wave of cold air wash over her. It made her blink, and her thoughts to stutter, just for a second.
Then she was aware once more of the seat beneath her and the kicking heel of the child next to her. Of soft conversations around the room. A man yawned and went back to his reading.
That was the jump?
They had really crossed 1,200 light years…and justshivered?
A jump of that magnitude really should be announced. Received with more fanfare than a yawn.
The ship moved sideways. It felt sideways to Lucie for her row of chairs ran parallel to the spine of the ship. The ship was really moving forward.
Oh, how she wished there was a window! Or even a screen showing the view beyond the fuselage.Somethingto show her what hung in front of the ship’s nose.
The surge halted but Lucie could tell from the subtle vibrations through her feet that the engines were still working to push the ship through space at an even speed.
Then, the ship settled, dropping a few meters, and came to a halt.
Instantly, everyone got to their feet and retrieved packs and luggage. The mother rose and pulled her children in around her and shepherded them toward the wide door they’d entered through.
So did everyone else.
They’d arrived at Charlton City.
Lucie remained in her seat, staring at the shuffling wave of humans and Varkans pushing toward the door, which was now opening. She saw bright lights beyond the door. Heard the clank of machinery, hissing steam vents, and the ticking of cooling metal. And voices. Shouts and directions. The clang of tools.
