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12
The boat lifted on time with a powerful whine of all four grav-desist engines, while Jory, Josenda, the mercenaries sat strapped into high-backed chairs in a passenger transit bay on the third floor. Josenda explained that the engines still had to push the boat upward, but somehow the engines fooled the atmosphere into thinking it was more like water and the ship more like a block of wood.
They rose into the night sky. He saw more stars as the atmosphere thinned and his field of vision deepened. The red moon showed its valleys and rilles.
The boat burned upward, and they seemed to move in several directions all at once, and always in shifting combinations, that made his stomach feel like a balloon full of air. Josenda slipped him a small bag just in time, and he expelled the last of Giru's vegetable soup, bless her soul. He rinsed with mint tea.
They slowed to a crawl before a huge black shape with myriad tiny squares of light in its many surfaces. Rockets fired in near-zero grav. The boat slowly bumped to a stop inside a featureless cage just big enough to hold it, and the boat was bolted to the floor and ceiling. Only then were the humans allowed to get out. Jory followed Josenda on shaky legs.
As they walked down the metal ramp, Jory looked around in amazement.
Josenda laughed at his expression. "It's big all right. But it's average. RTL runs hundreds of freighters up and down the Third Arm. Some of them are so big the Dora Mora could fit into a single cargo bay."
Jory could not imagine that. He craned his neck as he walked. This was a noisy, industrial environment. There was room for four or five boats; at the moment, only one was out and he assumed still on the ground here or on Fril. The ceilings receded into darkness, and he could not see how high they went—he was blinded by round factory lights that floated on cross-stabilizing cables. The ship had its own gravity, he noted, though he felt a little bit different, just a fraction—he couldn't tell if it was more or less gravity than on Shur.
They passed knots of humans in overalls. All were busy—some pushing cargo around on small grav-desist floats, others welding metal on metal so sparks flew before their black safety lenses, others trooping to the water cooler or carrying electric data tablets around.
Josenda took him up in a lift. "You'll stay in your own quarters on the Officers' Deck. What a lucky guy. I'll get to see you most of your waking hours though."
"When do I begin to find out why he brought me here?"
"When he's ready." She spoke deferently of the Ruandap.
"I will be patient." He waited in the dim light as the lift hummed.
When the lift stopped, they stepped into a pleasantly gloomy, wide corridor with carpeted floors and electronic lighting. The walls and doors were paneled in wood, and all the doors were closed, their heavy brass handles ornate.
"This is where you will stay for the time being," she said, throwing open a door. Jory stepped into an oppressively close, musty smelling room with no flavor or personality. "Like a tomb," she said lightly, "let's freshen it up." She flicked switches, and the lighting closed in—brighter wherever he walked, dimmer the farther away. A faint sigh of machinery caused delightful cool, fresh air to waft around Jory. A wall flickered into life, showing a panoramic sunset over a sea somewhere in the universe. The air, wherever that was, seemed to be on fire. "If you want music, entertainment, you have everything." She flicked some more switches, and music blared over him, and the wall changed to a scene of naked women strutting with feathered fans. She turned off the music, and the sunset returned. "I'll let you blast your senses numb after I'm gone if you wish."
"Thank you, I like the quiet."
She stood awkwardly and squeezed her hands together. "Maybe I should be direct, Jory. I am married, so don't get any ideas."
He felt his cheeks burn red. He'd already had some ideas, albeit dim and unrealized. He wanted to say something clever, but couldn't think of anything.
She showed him a refrigerator and a kitchen. He had a bathroom, whose workings she explained to him. "You know how to flush, yes?"
"How to what?"
"Flush." She pushed a button, and water swirled away, replaced by transparent fresh water colored blue like a mountain stream. "After you go. And always wash thoroughly afterward. It's important, because we're in confined quarters, and we have to keep the bugs under control."
After she bid him goodnight and left, he turned and looked into a mirror. He saw how different he looked. He tried cupping his palms over the round horn plates on his temples, but he still looked different. What human woman would want him?
He ate a few prepared foods with a spoon, not knowing how to hold them or what to put on them. He learned quickly that, no matter how a thing tasted, if in doubt, there was a small bottle of red liquid that would cover the food's smell and taste with a blanket of fire as potent as those flaming sunsets roiling on the walls.
After eating, he lay on the bed and watched the wall. After a while, he figured out that there were controls in a side panel of the bed. He simply had to march his fingers up and down the edge of the bed. As he did so, the pictures changed. He was fascinated by markets and beaches and roads and waving life forms on various worlds. Before falling asleep, however, he gazed at a scene of women who wore tiny two-piece bathing suits and lingered around a square pool of greenish-blue water whose surface rippled in a hot white noon sun.
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