traveler, say, becomes trapped—trapped in space, and free in time instead. Another theory has it that each is a throat to another universe, another a loop in time—well, that's all on the other side. I don't want to exaggerate. We were tracking well off an edge. Spinning black holes might be a cost-free energy source, that's why we were tracking. That's where it was that we blew."
"Blew? Out there? My God," Collette says, goes silent for a moment. "How lucky you are to be back, alive and back. There's an investigation?"
"The investigation was finished almost four years ago, out on range. But since I've been back, maybe it's just bureaucracy, it's like thick glue in gears on Guam. They don't want me to leave. At
all.
I've filed a dozen reports, answered every question. But still..."
Collette looks away, she picks at grassy weeds growing among the strawberries. "There's truth to that anywhere, nowadays," she says. "My brother used to say that soon enough nothing will happen. Maybe it's already gotten to the point where there are so many administrative strata to go through that nothing happens, nothing changes. That's the way it seems. An investigation can last forever. But look," she says, turning her palms up, tossing grass into a breeze, "right now you're here. You're traveling first class. People wait months for this, people who can afford it. You came right on. Somebody must be looking out for you."
I push my hand at the soil and run my fingers through—dank, spongy, sweet. I did that myself, I think. I rewrote my program at the military office, punched it through while the wormy program clerk was at morning meditation. Technically I have military status. I had such an overload of leave time I went right out. I wonder if SciCom even knows yet; by now there is nothing they can do. I tell Collette just how it was that I got here.
She looks at me for a long moment. "You really entered your
own
leave program?"
"I was only a member of the Committee Pilot, but I flew the ship," I tell her. "So that was by default. Same thing. As far as I'm concerned, they've defaulted ever since I've gotten back to Guam. They write off the suicide, they're encouraging a friend of mine to kill himself, I think, they don't seem to care. Except they do want to keep their hands on me—I've got that pretty clear."
"And why am I assigned to you?" Collette asks slowly, asks herself. "There's security on the ship, you had to clear it, you may not even have known when you were..."
"The blonde woman... ?"
Collette stares at me hard. "She's just one of the things that happen here," she says. "They happen all the time— casual pairs, we call them. I can't conceive that it's anything else; I cannot conceive of the possibility."
I sigh and apologize for the question.
"You don't have to apologize," Collette says quietly. "It's all right with me. You can ask questions if you want to, but if you just let things happen here, it works out just as well. Knowing isn't going to make a difference." She pauses, looks at her still hands, at me. "I live by what's inside a program," she continues. "I don't go any further than that. I live by what's inside. Like coming to this place, eating these strawberries, sitting here with you. I like you."
"Thanks," I say, wondering—am I being entirely fair to her?—if that isn't just what she should say, would say, to anyone? I ask Collette if she felt that way—to live only by what's programmed, no matter what—when she was a kid.
"No." Collette smiles, leans back. "I was going to be a volleyball player, an Olympic volleyball player. Then I was going to fly, as a vane analyst, or... Well, I fly. I wound up one day assigned to do this."
"And that's all right?"
Now Collette shrugs. "The flying I like, the food is good, I'm done by someone almost every day. But, well, the truth is, I usually feel like a nurse. First-class passengers run pretty old."
"That puts my self-image back into perspective." I