TWENTY-ONE
Spiral Dance
Twilight Interval
WHEN THE DOOR was unlocked, the quarters were surprisingly convenable. When the door was dogged open, the quarters were quite comfortable.
He relaxed there now, Dulsey bunked below him, both quietly occupying themselves while the ship moved—quietly and without turmoil—through what Cantra had styled “the long twilight.”
He’d been working with his log book, bringing it up to date. It was . . . comforting to write out his notes and observations by hand, though some entries were necessarily in a code he held in common only with his commander. He had his doubts that the book would ever make it back into the hands of his commander, but it might. It might. And in the meantime, it was work, and a balm to an M’s active nature.
Below him, Dulsey was reading her share of the flimsies the captain had allowed crew to print out to pass the time.
Cantra was also reading in her quarters. If he craned his head one way, he could see her open door, and, beyond, a long leg stretched out on the bunk. If he craned his head the other way, he could see the tree in the pilots’ tower, dreaming its own dreams.
Those dreams sometimes woke him from his own sleep cycle, as if a distant sun had come over the mountain just now. It had worried him for a while—the how and the why of it. Lately, he’d taken a more philosophic attitude. Ship time, tree time, what mattered it? Time passed—that was the fact no one escaped.
Dulsey seemed not to notice that his day wasn’t quite in synch with the ship’s. Cantra surely did notice, as she noticed everything that bore on her ship’s state. She didn’t remark it, though, which Jela knew she wouldn’t do, unless and until he affected the ship’s necessities.
Log brought up to date, Jela stowed the book and the pen, and reached for his own share of flimsies, which he’d anchored under his knee.
He didn’t immediately begin to read though. Instead, he leaned his head back and listened to the sounds. The comforting, usual sounds of a well-maintained and ship-shape ship, her crew at ease and easy within the group.
Oddly enough, the easiness of their odd and randomly formed crew reinforced one of the tenets apparently espoused by the sheriekas—that “old humans” were herd creatures.
As a crew, Jela thought lazily, they were hardly a rousing illustration of the “old humans,” when between them none had or could have met anyone approximating mother or father.
Still, he and Pilot Cantra might be said to have a mother and father; even if no one could ever have come forward to claim them. Met or unmet, there were progenitors of sorts.
Dulsey, though, was a full custom build, her and the rest of her Batch pulled from human genetic parts for a specific job, for profit.
That thought turned in his mind a moment, and he wondered briefly what motivated the sheriekas, for surely the universe that he knew and moved through was motivated by profit. Pilot Cantra’s considerable skills were surely the result of desire for profit, as were Dulsey’s. His own existence had been ruled by others, largely those who also obeyed others . . . and those others looking for little more than a quiet place to spin their webs and turn their profits.
Now, though, it might be that the profit motivation would finally fail the herd of men. When men like Rint dea’Sord traded with the Enemy, with thoughts of their own profit uppermost. When those Inside interests who ordered the High Command declared that their profit—their lives—were of more importance than the profits and lives of those who lived elsewhere . . .
The instinct for profit, thought Jela—personal profit. That instinct was maybe not a long-term survival trait.
The herd instinct, on the other hand, apparently permitted Pilot Cantra, who had not too long past locked him and Dulsey in and out at whim—to lounge, reading, while they did the same, in pursuit of goals that might transcend simple profit. Though it was never, Jela told himself, well to assume that Cantra’s motives were either simple or apparent. And to remember that, if ever a woman held to her own profit above all else, it was Pilot Cantra.
Which led back to the question of what profit Cantra saw for herself in their present operation. Was it after all the herd instinct propounded by some ancient sheriekas philosopher, rising above the instinct for personal profit?
Well. Best not share that question with Dulsey, suddenly bereft of the life-long company of her Pod, nor with Cantra, who would surely laugh. The tree, now, might enjoy the puzzle, but it was presently in its more restful state, perhaps awaiting a dawn light years distant, so he forbore from passing it on.