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Chapter 1: Gaston's Landing

JAEL PAUSED at the edge of the spaceport lobby, heart pounding. She was late for the afternoon spacing call, and she could see from where she stood that today her name would go to the bottom of a very long list. The spaceport was crowded, noisy, clotted with people competing for space, for time, for service—shippers, stewards, unrated crew, normal-space pilots, riggers. Loud voices echoed across the room, voices of the stewards calling riggers for possible assignment. The calls seemed to float over the lounge area where the riggers congregated—riggers for hire, too many of them—all hoping that the stewards would come to them, match them with ship masters, ask them to fly.

Jael drew a breath, and almost turned away, but forced herself to remain. She was ready—more than ready—for an assignment. She had the schooling and the space-trial credentials, and she looked presentable: a slender, dark-haired young woman, not beautiful maybe, but neatly groomed, in a tunic suit, grey edged with scarlet. Did she have the stomach for the disappointment that was almost sure to come? She surveyed the lobby, considering. Her eyes widened as she glimpsed a young rigger of her acquaintance, Toni Gilen, threading her way across the lobby toward a steward. Jael shook her head and strode in. Toni was one of the shyest riggers Jael knew; if Toni could be assertive, surely Jael could be.

She felt no particular hope; she felt only the need that drew her here. It was the same feeling that drove all riggers: the almost irresistible need to shape, to explore, to live the fantastic realities of a realm that nonriggers could never touch or master, but could only dream of. And she sensed the ubiquitous conflicting emotion, almost palpable in the air. It was fear: fear of failure, fear of the shippers whom the riggers hoped to serve. She felt the need and fear combine like a thrill in her gut, her groin, her spine; but beneath it all, somewhere, remained the hope that today might be the day she would contract to fly.

She walked past the waiting area, toward the registry window, her feet moving quickly on the tile floor.

"Hi there, Jaelie!" she heard, and despite herself, she turned. A hawk-nosed young man was laughing from within the railing that set off the rigger lounge. "Gonna show us how to cheat the odds today?" Jael opened her mouth to reply, but the young man was already strutting away, grinning.

Burning with anger, Jael stalked on. Riggers, she thought bitterly. They were such misfits, most of them. Self-centered, insecure, social incompetents. Walking raw nerves, in a world none of them was suited for. Was she like them? She hoped not. And yet, these were the people who navigated spaceships through the slippery mists of the Flux; it was their unique gifts of vision that made travel among the stars possible. Jael was proud to be a rigger. But she was not always proud of the company she had to keep.

She approached the registration window nervously. She was always aware of her youth and her relative inexperience, but among the spaceport officials and shipowners, she felt even tinier and more vulnerable than she really was. A raggedly bearded unrated crewman brushed by her and winked, grinning lewdly. She ignored the gesture, or tried to. She hated this place and those who worked here, always ready to prey on the weak and the uncertain. But if she wanted to return to space, she had to do it from here. And more than anything in the world, she wanted to return to space. To the net. To the vision. To the freedom.

A young man was ahead of her at the registration window, talking in a croak, a rasping whisper. Jael waited, fidgeting, until he left and it was her turn at the window. A middle-aged woman with bluish hair spoke without looking up. "ID?"

Jael touched her bracelet to the dull-surfaced eye of the reader. "Jael LeBrae."

"Didn't ask your name, honey. It's right here in front of me." The woman turned, touched something on her console. "Jael LeBrae," she said, reading the output. "Available for single Class Three or multiple Class Five. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

The woman looked up, pursing her lips. "You the daughter of Willie LeBrae?" Her eyes bored into Jael's.

"Yes." The familiar tightness took hold in her throat. Was the woman going to ask about her father? She didn't want to talk about it, about him.

"I see. Well, nothing right now. Do you want to wait?"

Jael hesitated, struggling not to resent the indifference in the woman's voice. "Are you expecting anything?" she asked finally.

The woman looked at her in surprise. "Why, how would I know, honey? We hear about them when they come in. If you want to wait, you can wait. Is that what you want to do?"

Jael stared at her without answering. Could she stand it? It was the one way, the only way. "Yes," she whispered.

"Fine. Now, make way for others, won't you?"

Jael walked away from the window and joined the other riggers in the lounge. As she glanced back, she saw that there was no one in line behind her.

 

* * *

 

There were no empty seats in the quiet area, so she stood near the wall watching some of the riggers playing board and tank games, until a bench space opened up. As she slid into the empty seat, the young man to her right moved a few inches farther away. Jael tried not to let her resentment show. She was tired of being blamed for her father, for people and events over which she had no control.

But there were ways of dealing with emotional discomfort, and Jael used one of them now. She sat perfectly still, her back and neck erect, balanced. Closing her eyes halfway, she slowly erased the visual input from her consciousness. She let her inner mind see, without her eyes.

She was aware, with her inner eye, of the expressions borne on the faces of the riggers waiting in this place. Boredom. Nervous tension. Desire. Inward-turned senses. Outward eagerness that belied the darker feelings roiling within. She smelled the aura of hot fear and desire that marked a roomful of riggers, the way musky body scents marked the dens of animals. These riggers came from dens all over the continent to this spaceport: to wait in this lounge, to hope, to need and dread the chance to take a starship into space.

But Jael didn't want to think about them now, didn't want to think about the competition. She had better things to dwell upon: memories that gave her a shiver as her thoughts fled from the here and now. As they fled into the past, to the time of her first flight, not so very long ago—a training flight, the first of four . . .

She had been working with other riggers, but it had been different then—not the bitter competition she faced now. Riggers depended upon one another in guiding their ships through the currents, through the reefs and shoals of flight. It was by navigating the Flux—an other-dimensional realm of mystery and imagination—that starships physically passed among the stars. And in steering their ships, riggers had to work together, not just cooperatively as would the crew of any ship, but as artists meshed in psychic union. Joined by shared intuition and inner vision, melded in working unity, they steered their vessels. In the schools it was difficult and challenging, flying simulations from the libraries, navigating any of a thousand actual and imagined courses. In space it was doubly challenging, because it was real, and life was at stake—and in the conquest of the challenge, it was infinitely more rewarding than any simulation.

On that first flight and those that followed, Jael had left it all behind: the fears and needs, the problems of life back on the world, the family, the business, the reputation. All that disappeared when she entered the rigger's net and wove together the threads of real space, of the Flux, of her imagination . . . and crafted of it a world so cunningly real that the spaceship slipped through it as surely as it passed through the vacuum and weightlessness of normal-space. On that first flight, she and her crewmates had carried the ship through a magical undersea realm of tropical waters, warm and crystalline blue. And where were those crewmates, her fellow students, now? All gone, off among the stars . . .

"Listen up, people, I have some new openings here!"

For an instant, she wasn't sure whether the voice had come from her memory or from the outside. She widened her eyes, brought them into focus. A shop steward was standing in the center of the lobby, job slate in hand. He was calling out positions to be filled.

Jael shook herself to alertness and listened.

" . . . a two-rigger crew to make a fast run up through Aeregia Minor, with calls at Parvis III and Chaening's Outpost. We need a four-rigger crew for assignment with a passenger-carrying line; you'll have to go through the complete screening and testing on that one. And we have two seats for single-rigger jobs, one freight and one courier." The steward paused and looked around at the attentive, brooding faces. "Don't crowd, and don't apply if you're not qualified," he concluded, then turned and disappeared into the office.

Jael rose, along with at least half the riggers in the room. There was some crowding and jockeying for position at the half dozen ID readers, then she was in line. The woman ahead of her glanced back skeptically, but shrugged and said nothing. Frowning, Jael remained intentionally oblivious to any other glances, until her turn came to slide her ID bracelet into the reader niche. She drummed her fingers, waiting.

The screen blinked and displayed:

 

We're sorry. We cannot consider your application for any presently available position.

 

Jael stared at the words. For three months now, since her last flight, she had received nothing but rejections. It would have been one thing to lose out on positions if she'd been unqualified, but she was consistently being denied even the chance to prove herself.

"Hey, are you going to stand there all day?" complained a voice behind her. Turning, Jael focused her frown upon the voice's owner. "What'd you expect, anyway?" the complaining woman muttered sarcastically. "Why don't you try the other side? That's where you belong, isn't it?"

I don't know—what did I expect? Jael thought, turning away. Fair treatment? I don't know why. She returned to her seat with as much dignity as she could muster. A young man she recognized from rigger school kept looking in her direction; she did not return the gaze. But the anger kept bubbling back up. Why don't you try the other side? The thought made her tremble. The other side of the spaceport lobby was where the unregulated shippers hired riggers—riggers so untamable or unfit for society, or so desperate, that they would fly with virtually no legal protection, not even the minimal restrictions imposed on the registered shippers. It was there that her father had hired his crews. It was there that the family name had been turned from a name of pride to a name of derision. Never, she vowed.

But other words echoed in her mind, words she had heard someone mutter behind her back more than once: "Who the hell wants to hire a daughter of Willie LeBrae?" She hadn't responded to the comment; she never did. But that didn't stop it from hurting.

And that was the worst of it, really. Her fellow riggers, if anyone, ought to understand, ought to sympathize. Most of them knew the pain of rejection well enough. But it was as though they only knew how to cut deeper, how to make a wound hurt even more. There were those, of course, who just sat there, lost in their own worlds, neither harming nor helping. They barely stirred even to answer the calls; they were hardly going to rise to anyone's defense. And then there were her schoolmates—those whose trust she had gained anyway—but they were scattered like dust now, among the stars.

Jael was going to fly again, and join her friends out there; of that she was determined. Sooner or later they would have to give her a berth.

If she had to wait here forever.

 

* * *

 

The next few hours felt like forever. There was only one other call, and that for a single passenger-rated rigger, for which she was unqualified. She got up and went to the lunch counter and bought a cup of leek chowder, the only thing they sold that was any good; and she stood at the edge of the lounge, spooning chowder into her mouth, tasting the thick pasty sauce and the chunks of spud-vine and leek. By the time she'd scraped the little bowl clean and licked off the spoon, she'd decided that enough was enough for one day.

With a last tentative gaze over the lounge—as though one more call might come, as though waiting just a few moments more might make the difference—she trudged toward the door. And with a final dark glance across the lobby toward the unregulated area, she strode out into the late afternoon sun. A tremendous oppression seemed to lift from her shoulders as she left the spaceport building—not the weight of her unfulfilled dream, because that never lifted, but the weight of the enduring and the silent frustration. It was a burden she was willing to bear, because she had to for the sake of her dream; but it felt good to put it down for a while.

The road home to the multidorm wound up through the hills. It was a fine, crisp day—a good day for walking, for shouting at the wind, for sighing under the consoling caress of the sun.

"Jael!" The voice was behind her.

She paused and turned, blinking, only half-focusing. Her mind was still in the sky.

A figure was striding up the hill toward her. "Jael, how are you?" It was a dark-haired young man with striking silver eyebrows, waving a hand, trying to get her attention. "Ho, Jael! Are you in there? Anybody home?"

Slowly her inner concentration melted away. "Dap—hi!" she said, smiling slowly. "I didn't expect to see you. When did you get in?" Dap was her cousin, also a rigger—and one of the few people still based here on Gaston's Landing whose presence could bring a smile to her lips. Last she'd heard, he'd been out on a long flight.

"I just got in a few days ago," Dap said, falling in alongside her. "You walking up to the rigger hall?" He pointed up the road.

Jael nodded, resuming her stride. "A few days? I haven't seen you."

Dap shrugged. "I've been lying low since I got back. Wanted to be by myself for a while." As they walked together, he broke into a grin. "How have you been? It was really some flight, Jael. I didn't want to wreck the memory by coming in here right away and facing all that." He waved back toward the spaceport.

"That's great," Jael said softly, and felt a twinge of guilt. This was her cousin, and she wanted to share his excitement, but just now it was rather hard.

"You look a little down in the mouth there," Dap said. "What's the matter?"

"What isn't?" she growled, and instantly regretted her tone.

Dap chuckled. If anyone else had laughed, she would have wanted to murder him. With Dap, she was willing to forgive. "You think it's funny?" she said finally.

He nudged her with an elbow. "Naw. You know I don't think that. But are things really so bad?"

She shrugged and kept walking. "I can't get work. That's pretty bad, isn't it?"

"I know what you mean," Dap said. "But we all have trouble with that at some time or other. When you only have a few qualifying flights under your belt, it's tough to break in."

"It's not that. I've had two paying flights. It's not just breaking in."

Her cousin looked puzzled. "Then what—"

"It's that they won't give it to me. They don't want me. They're keeping me out."

Dap frowned. "You mean, because of your father's—?"

"Of course! What am I supposed to do? Change my name? Move to another planet? How can I do that if they won't let me fly?" She blinked back a tear, and had to steel herself to keep from crying. She couldn't help what people thought, but she didn't have to let herself be affected by it. And she didn't mean to wreck Dap's day too.

Dap grunted. They walked up the road, their feet crunching on the loose gravel. After a while, the movement began to dispel her gloom, and she asked, "So how was it? Your flight, I mean?"

A smile tugged suddenly at the corner of Dap's mouth. "Beautiful. Just beautiful." He turned suddenly. "Would you like to share it with me?"

She was startled. "What do you mean?"

"Dreamlink, Jael. There's a machine at my dad's friend's cottage. We could go there right now, and instead of my telling you about it . . ." Dap grinned and caught her hand. "It might lift you a little, Jael, to relive it with me. Taste it, feel it, smell it, see it. Jael, it was wonderful!"

Jael tensed with desire and fear. She felt Dap's hand release hers as she looked at him, looked into his intense, earnest eyes, dark under those silvery brows. "Well, I . . . I don't know,"

"Jael, have you ever been in the dreamlink? It's as close to rigging as you can come without being—"

"Yes, I know." She blinked her gaze away, embarrassed. "But it's awfully . . . personal, Dap, I mean, it's not like we're . . . I mean, we're cousins. We're not—" She'd heard how some riggers used the dreamlink during their off time. It made a very interesting enhancement for lovers. Or so she had been told.

"Hey—hey! Jael, it's not like that." Dap laughed gently and touched her arm, "Jael, don't worry—it's not sexual, if that's what you're thinking of." Now he looked embarrassed. "Or anything like that. I mean, sure it can be, but it doesn't have to be. It's just a way of sharing thoughts and memories and feelings and . . ." He hesitated, and shrugged.

She trembled, avoiding his eyes. This was Dap she was talking to, her cousin, her friend. What was she afraid of? Didn't she want the chance of feeling what he'd felt as he took wing between the stars? "I—" She felt her mind churning, her feelings turning over and over. Perhaps she should; at least it would give her a taste of what she'd been yearning for. At least it would be with a friend.

"Jael," he said, "well be looking right into one another, and our souls will link—"

"Okay," she sighed, interrupting him. She nodded and murmured huskily, "Okay, let's go."

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