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13
In the next few days, Jory received a thorough medical exam and was pronounced fit. He must eat more fruits and vegetables, he was told, and from then on, every day a new basket of such food arrived in his room.
Wearing undistinguished second-hand—but clean; around Josenda, always clean—overalls, he strolled the length and breadth of the ship, just on the two decks reserved for humans, and sampled its pleasures—restaurants, holo houses, wine shops. She took him to a viewing blister upside, where the unwavering stars spread out in motionless disarray.
After a few days, someone knocked at the door, and Jory yelled "Come!" thinking it was Josenda. But, as the door drifted open, in the hall stood three persons like himself. Jory jumped up from his bed, startled. One was a tall, broad-shouldered older man with white wavy hair and a handsome if florid face wrinkled with too many kjirs—Malinu.
The second was a shorter, slighter man, much younger, with the slitted eyes Jory had seen in Don—Kinkidai.
The third was a woman—skinny, small, cold—Nolani. She had almond eyes like Josenda, but her skin was white and waxy.
All three wore plush brown overalls with no marks of wear on them. Also, all three had keratin plates on the sides of their heads as Jory did.
"May we come in?" Malinu asked after introducing the three. He had a pleasant, modulated voice.
"Of course," Jory said. He showed them to the corner table, which had four chairs.
Malinu said: "We are astropaths. I take it you are one of us, or will be shortly."
"That's the first I've heard. Sorry I have nothing to serve you."
"It's all right. We can order something later. Maybe a hot kjaba?"
"With lots of condiments," Jory replied. Malinu appeared charmed, Kinkidai calmly nodded with a certain reservation, and Nolani merely opened her dark eyes wider as if he'd said something shocking. Nolani puzzled Jory. He studied the black makeup around her eyes, the perfect little silver bowtie in her forehead, the rings in her cheeks, the way her long black hair was wound in braids to make a crown atop her head.
While Kinkidai raised a wrist gadget to his ear and spoke softly to the ship's galley, Malinu said: "The Captain will meet with you this evening, and he wanted us to explain the rudiments of our work to you. Have you ever traveled in space before?"
Jory shook his head.
"I can see we must start at the beginning. Have you seen the observation deck?"
"Yes. Josenda took me there and I had a long look. It's boring in a way, and yet very impressive."
"It will be more impressive when I tell you some numbers related to what you are looking at. We'll go there later."
"Are you the only three Astropaths on this ship?" Jory asked Kinkidai.
"Yes."
"Are we fairly rare in the universe then?"
Kinkidai had answered the real question already. For whatever reason, neither Malinu nor Kinkidai appeared to be possible partners for Nolani. Was it expected, then, that she pair with Jory? Such a rash assumption would explain why the woman looked so—scared, he could see now.
"We are one in tens of millions," Malinu said. "Millions of humans died when the aliens revolted against our kind centuries ago. Millions of us were shipped off into slavery. Your branch wound up as slaves on Shur, with the Obans. Judging by the size of your keradz, you may prove to have some prodigious talent. We'll know soon enough."
"So what is it, exactly, that I have a talent for?"
Malinu described their work. "Have you ever skipped a stone on a pond?"
Jory frowned. His childhood had been dark and without much play. His parents had not been very warm people, though they had fed him and comforted him when he was sick. A memory teased up, of playing by the river with several other human boys. "You mean, tossing a flat pebble with spin, like so"—he imitated—"so that the pebble jumps out of the water several times before it falls in?"
"Exactly!" the other three said all at once.
Malinu continued: "That's how we get through long stretches of space. Plain ordinary motion at the speed of light is impossible, but we manage to skip outside of space, using a special hyperlight drive, and return, like the pebble, or like a frog hopping from stone to stone. The more closely we aim the pebble, and are able to plan its trajectory, the more efficient our travel becomes. That's where we come in. A sentient brain is still the most complex and finely honed tool in the universe. The old humans dickered around with their own genetic material. They did things you and I and most people alive today would not dare. But they were sure they were invincible, and that's what brought them down. They did many daring things, and one of them was to introduce a strain of genes into the race that would enable us astropaths to sharpen the trajectory of a ship through hyperspace by finer and finer degrees."
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