BREEZE FROM THE STARS
                             by Mary Rosenblum

Mary Rosenblum has published SF novels and short stories since 1990. She
has been a Hugo nominee and a winner of the Compton Crook Award. Mary
lives and writes on country acreage where she also trains dogs. Her novels,
Horizons from Tor Books and Water Rites from Fairwood Press, were
released this past year. You can find out more about her books at her website
[www.maryrosenblum.com]. In her new tale for us, she shows us what it
might be like to direct space traffic while experiencing the...
                                       ****
Everybody in the graduating class went to The Hole where the working jocks hung
out, up high near the hub on the NYUp orbital to celebrate ... or gripe ... when the
rock jock postings went up. Sanya and Jorges got drunk fast, they had no tolerance
to anything, and were already hooting and pushing each other around in the
near-micro-g of the tiny bar. They’d been posted as new members of NYUp’s elite
Team One. Well, they had the reflexes of rock jocks, all right. But so did he. Jeri
huddled back in the shadows, nursing a beer flavored with raspberries from the hub
gardens. Up this high, where no tourists wandered, the walls were curved, no
corners, and if you pushed a bit, you could bounce off the ceiling in the marginal
gravity. The beer seemed to rise up into his head instead of going down and he felt
drunk even after just half a bag. Not giddy, just a little disconnected from reality.
      He sure wasn’t celebrating. Wasn’t sure why the hell he’d come. Jeri sucked
another mouthful of bitter raspberry brew from the bag.
        “Your face says washed out.” A tall rock jock with tawny skin and a lot of
fiber light tattoo-work drifted over. “But the wash-outs do their cryin’ over in the
Blue Moon.” She put a decorated arm over his shoulder, breathed beer in his face.
“What happened? You get posted to New Singapore and you hate Islam?”
       He thought about shoving her arm off, didn’t. Each tattoo meant a hit. He
studied an emerald green Celtic knot, wondering what it meant. She might have taken
out a piece of junk ... a floater, a danger to the orbital platforms or the traffic
between. It might have been a rock coming in. Might have been a pirate raider
carrying serious hardware. Rock jocks whacked whatever the dispatchers sent ‘em
to.
      “I could take your mind off your bad post. Hey, you’ll feel better when
you’re out hottin’ after a rock anyway.”
     “Yeah.” He didn’t look at her. “Only they stuck me with a dispatch dock.
Why? I had the best hit record in our class.”
      “Dispatch?” The arm withdrew. “They don’t train jocks and put ‘em on the
cans to dispatch.”
      “Good.” He drained the last of his beer. “Go tell Delfinio that, will you?”
       “Delfinio? That Dispatch.” Her tone capitalized it and made him look up,
finally. She was nodding.
      “When’s your birthday, kid?”
      “Huh?”
      “Let me guess ... somewhere between November 30 and December 17, right?”
      “Yeah. December 5, so what?” He stared at her, waiting for the punch line.
      “You’re an Ophiuchus. Like a Cancer or Aries, you know? The woo-woo
zodiac thing. Only it’s some weird thirteenth house.”
      He didn’t get it, kept his face still, not gonna help her to trip him into the
punch line. Stupid coming here tonight. Should have just gone to the dorm and to
bed. Oh, get it over with. He sighed. “That isn’t one of the Zodiac signs,” he said.
“I’m a Sagittarius. As if it mattered.”
       “Oh, it’s a sign all right. And it matters.” The jock winked at him. “To
Delfinio at least. That’s why he picked you. He has this thing about Ophiuchus and
people who are born in that sign. But look at it this way, Delfinio is Dispatch. The
crews on the platforms just play backup. You’re at the center of the universe, bro.
Del’s got eyes all over his bod ... never misses a molecule.” Her eyes narrowed and
she looked past his shoulder. “Speak of the devil.” She chuckled, slapped him on
the shoulder so that he nearly flew out of the hammock seat. “Keep your pants on,
honey.” And wove her way through the crowded bar with the gliding grace of a
native upsider who had never set foot on Earth.
        He looked where she had looked, saw people in the bar move, give space, the
way you only saw it when someone big walked the hallways in the orbital platforms.
This little, skinny gnome with a naked skull, a micro-g body, and the big eyes and
narrow face that said he had some Gypsy genes in him walked into that space. The
Gypsies weren’t quite human ... so the talk said ... and the look made him old,
because the Gypsies had left for the Oort in the Departure, years ago. He glided
through the empty, respectful space, ignoring the murmured greetings, came right up
to Jeri. Looked him straight in the face.
      “Jeri Annunciato-Sontag?” His voice was high and reedy.
      “Yeah.” Everyone was staring at them. “That’s me.”
       “Let’s go.” The gnome twitched one narrow shoulder. “Save the cities the
cost of a shuttle lift out to your post tomorrow.” He looked at the empty beer bag in
Jeri’s hand. “Unless you need to get drunker first?”
      Jeri spotted the rock jock with the light tattoos grinning from the edge of the
crowd. Bowed in her direction. “Sure, Delfinio,” he said and sailed the empty beer
bag toward the bar. “Why not? Let’s get to work.”
     “Oh, too soon yet.” A wide grin stretched Delfinio’s face. “But we can go
home now. Work when you know your butt from a black hole.”
       Jeri followed him out of The Hole. He felt as if he pushed through an invisible
skin that sealed behind him, shutting him out of the warm, close world of Sanya,
Jorges, and the other jocks he’d trained with. The rock jock—he’d already forgotten
her name—winked. But she was on the other side of that skin, too. He didn’t return
it.
                                          ****
       Delfinio shuttled them over to Dispatch in a slightly larger version of a jock
pod, an egg with the spiderweb harness designed to keep you intact no matter what
your pod was doing. Jeri had already had the navigation-interface implanted, way
back when he passed into the program, so when Delfinio passworded them into the
system, the hull vanished and Jeri found himself floating in vacuum, facing the
blue-white disc of Earth. Even after all his training flights, the sight always brought a
rush of awe clear up from his toes to choke him for an instant. The slowly spinning
can that was Dragon Home caught the sunlight along the planet’s far perimeter,
spangled with lights and buzzing with traffic. Not far from the orbital platform, the
gleaming ribbon of the Elevator shimmered like a silver thread rising up from the
planet’s blue surface, the terminal like a jeweled bead at the end.
       I was going to spend my life out here, Jeri thought and another wave of
resentment rolled through him. Now he was going to spend it inside a can, sending
his former buddies out to chase rocks and pirates. So what if Delfinio was the primo
dispatcher. This was still a dispatch job.
       “You didn’t intend to become Dispatch,” Delfinio agreed as the pod
accelerated and the webbing tightened around Jeri’s body. Like the jock, he
capitalized the word. “No fun chases. No hunt and capture. No shoot ‘em up.”
Delfinio cackled.
      Great, a mind reader. Jeri wondered if Delfinio was a high-number empath.
That’s all he needed ... get shut up in a can with someone who could read his every
emotional shift. But if Delfinio overheard that, he didn’t say anything about it.
       It didn’t take long to reach Dispatch. An even larger version of the egg-shaped
jock pods, its matte black hull emerged suddenly from the star-sprinkled space
between cans. The pod docked like silk, not a jar as it merged with the smart-alloy
hull of Dispatch. A whisper of breeze told Jeri that the atmospheres were one. He
didn’t need that whisper. He smelled ... well ... living space. Delfinio freed himself
from his web with a single, fluid motion, kicked off, and arrowed through the port
that had opened in the joined hulls. Jeri untangled himself and pushed after, feeling
clumsy and slow compared to Delfinio’s fluid moves.
       Dispatch didn’t offer much. He hung up on the port and surveyed. Curved
hull walls of off-white immediately bored him. Controls and decorations would be in
virtual and he didn’t have the password yet. A grav-gym occupied space and he
counted two privacy closets that he could just about bet on would contain a simple
micro-g hammock, the kind you’d sleep in if you rode a miner out in the ‘roid belt.
“There’s nothing here.” He didn’t try to hide his surprise. “This is central dispatch,
right? I mean, if you’re processing all the input, sending it out to the platform
dispatchers, where are the others?”
      Delfinio hovered in front of a section of curved hull without answering. Jeri
recognized a kitchen wall ... drink dispensers, meal oven ... the whole works.
      “You want to eat?” Delfinio didn’t look at him. “Or you want more to drink?
You can get plastered tonight.” He turned and bared his teeth at Jeri. “Not after
tonight. But I think you will not wish to, eventually.”
       “I’m not hungry.” Jeri pushed off too hard, arrowed across the space,
rebounded from the hull beside the kitchen wall, managed to spill his momentum
with a somersault. None of this made sense. “I want to know what this is and why
the hell I’m here.”
       “Do you believe in Hell?” Delfinio sounded genuinely curious. He pushed
away from the kitchen wall, a tube of gelatinous, pale goo in his hands. He sucked
from it. “Gym you saw when you came in, you sleep in this space.” He touched
open one of the closets, nodded at the micro-g hammock Jeri had expected. “The
rest of your question you will answer yourself. So what Hell do you believe in?” He
looked expectant. Like a pet waiting for a treat.
      This was Dispatch? Jeri stared at the crazy old man for a moment. Couldn’t
be. “What about my birthday? Does that matter?”
     “Oh, he’s a smart one.” Without seeming to move a muscle, Delfinio
somersaulted slowly and precisely in place. “I saw Zai talking to you. She told you.”
      “No, she didn’t.” Jeri looked around the floating closet, his mind full of stars
and vacuum and the blue-white loom of Earth. Lost to him. “She just said it
mattered. What the hell has my birthday got to do with my ending up here?”
       “It is never wise to invoke something that you do not wish to experience.”
Delfinio blinked slowly. “As to your birthday, you were born up here on NYUp
platform. In the sign of Ophiuchus.”
      “What has that got to do with anything? And I never heard of that zodiac sign
and I mean who cares, anyway?” He stared at the slack hammock. “I had the best hit
record in the class.”
      “Anyone can hit a rock.” Delfinio somersaulted again, unmoving, violating a
whole lot more laws of physics. “Seeing what is out there to hit is talent. Go to bed,”
he said. “Go to sleep and dream.”
       “Dream of what?” Jeri said, but he muttered it under his breath and Delfinio
didn’t answer.
       Instead, he gave Jeri a password that allowed him to decorate the Dispatch
walls to his taste and to see the control fields, although Delfinio told him he was
locked out until he learned how to use them.
      Jeri thought about landscapes to paint on the walls of the pod. Settled for a
view of Earth, with the New York Up platform visible, and the glittering thread of the
Elevator. Just to remind himself of what he wasn’t doing. He wondered if Delfinio
knew what he had chosen, had a feeling that the old gnome did, but if so, he made
no comment. Delfinio finished his goo and then floated silently in the center of the
space, his eyes glazed, curled into a loose fetal position.
       Checking sensors? Watching for hazards so he could send the jocks out? It
sure didn’t look like he was doing much of anything.
       Jeri went to bed, even though the raspberry beer buzzed in his blood and he
wasn’t really sleepy.
                                         ****
       He didn’t dream ... not really. But at some point he woke to the soft darkness
of his hammock with the sense that he had been listening to a murmured
conversation. Delfinio, he thought, talking to himself. Almost before he could think
this, he slid back into slumber and didn’t wake again until the light in his hammock
increased slowly and the sound of music woke him.
                                        ****
       “Did you sleep well?” Delfinio floated near the kitchen wall, eating cubes of
flavored tofu. He was upside down to Jeri’s orientation, silhouetted by the
Earthscape with which Jeri had decorated the hull. Jeri didn’t change his position as
he touched himself a squeeze of black tea from the wall. Let Delfinio change his
orientation. He waited for Delfinio to ask him if he had dreamed, but instead, the old
gnome simply went on eating, popping the pale cubes of soy curd into his mouth,
chewing and swallowing without spilling a molecule.
      Jeri sucked hot tea, sighed, and toed off the wall, torquing himself into a
matching orientation with Delfinio. “I didn’t dream,” he said.
       “Today, you get to surf the sensors with me.” Delfinio’s eyes crinkled. “You
will dissolve. You will cease to exist and for a time ... it will be hard. But I will put
you back together. And then you will begin to comprehend Dispatch.”
       Jeri drew a deep breath. “Look, I know I’ve been ... angry about being here. I
guess I still am. And I don’t understand anything. What makes this so special when
all four platforms have twenty-four-seven crews watching the sensors?” He drew
another breath, saw not one flicker of response in Delfinio’s pale eyes. “Would you
explain about the zodiac thing? If I was supposed to dream something last night ... I
didn’t. So maybe you have the wrong person.”
       Without warning, without seeming to move a muscle, Delfinio drifted suddenly
close. Jeri couldn’t quite control his flinch and it set him drifting slowly toward the
wall. He flushed as Delfinio followed, a few centimeters separating them, so close
that he felt the heat radiating from Delfinio’s flesh.
       “You felt it.” Delfinio drifted suddenly away, so that the space between them
opened to a comfortable gap. “You are the right choice.” His smile broadened,
transforming his face. His eyes sparkled and Jeri had the sudden feeling that he was
looking through twin windows into the sky of another world. Then Delfinio
somersaulted, caught the kitchen wall, and looked over his shoulder at Jeri with a
wink. “Breakfast,” he said. “You will need it. What do you want to eat? I will tell you
about the zodiac and your birth as you eat.” Without waiting for Jeri’s answer, he
touched a tray of fruit and a hi-protein bagel from the wall, sailed it neatly to Jeri.
       “Ophiuchus is a constellation,” Delfinio began as Jeri popped the lid on the
tray. “It is called the Serpent Bearer and is not part of the zodiac. You know why?”
Delfinio’s body seemed to rotate around his head until he was oriented at right
angles to Jeri. “Back when the Babylonians invented the zodiac more than 3000
years ago, the sun passed through only twelve constellations ... the zodiac everyone
knows.” He cackled, drifting gently until he faced Jeri upside down. “But the
precession of the Earth makes it appear that the sun now passes through thirteen
houses. And the thirteenth, the one you were born into ... is Ophiuchus.”
       “So what?” Jeri picked the fat green grapes from the tray, one by one.
Someone had told him that on Earth, grapes grew only the size of his thumb. Puny.
“Who cares about zodiac signs? That’s like magic ... fortune tellers, you know? And
it’s downsider stuff anyway.” He popped another grape into his mouth, swallowed.
“I mean, maybe it makes a good pickup line downside, but not up here.”
       “It made a good pickup line for you.” Delfinio’s eyes twinkled at Jeri’s scowl.
“But it is not about magic ... or perhaps it is, depending on how you look at it.” He
snatched a grape from Jeri’s tray, sucked it from his palm and swallowed. “Now ...
in a small window of time in the first part of December ... an interstellar wind sweeps
over us, a helium wind flowing into the solar system from the direction of
Ophiuchus. The sun’s gravity and spiraling magnetic field focuses the material into a
cone and Earth passes through it during the first weeks of December. We’re inside
the cone now.” He smiled. “It flows over us ... the debris from the birth of stars.”
His pale eyes bored into Jeri’s. “That is why I chose you now. It is easier for you to
hear its voice.”
       “I ... didn’t hear any voice. “Jeri clutched the tray as if it might blast off. “I
told you. I didn’t dream.”
       “You heard it last night and you heard it as you evolved from fish to monkey
in the ancient sea of your mother’s womb.” Delfinio nodded and helped himself to
another grape. “It changed you, that voice, and now you will listen to it again and
learn to hear it forever. And learn to see. You will be good at this,” he said, and
pivoted, drifting gently away. “Finish your breakfast. I am going to exhaust you
today.”
     As soon as Jeri finished the bagel and the last of the grapes, Delfinio
passworded him into Dispatch.
      “Don’t worry,” Delfinio said as the walls shimmered and warped around Jeri.
“You cannot make any mistakes. You can only watch and begin to process.” He
snickered. “There will be a quiz.”
      About time to see the sensor controls, Jeri thought. Then, the walls of
Dispatch vanished and...
      ...he dissolved.
       A million simultaneous images crashed into his brain and he simply vanished
into them. In a microsecond, he was NYUp, Dragon Home, New Singapore, Euro
Two, black cans spinning, spangled with light, ship traffic, spilled garbage and lost
tools, rocks caught in Sol’s grip, dust, jock pods, shuttles...
       He gasped, struggled to process, dizzy, his stomach clamping down on the
grapes and chewed bread. Too many ... the images blurred together and he seemed
to spin down into chaos.
      Relax. Delfinio’s voice in his ear. Don’t try. You must dissolve. I will not let
you get lost.
       Words didn’t make any sense ... Jeri sucked in breaths ... one, two, three ...
all time suspended.
      Relax. Don’t look. Listen. Let the images themselves tell you what they are.
        Hand touching him. Warm. Comforting. Jeri focused on that one, tangible
sense and his breathing steadied. Don’t look, he thought. How do you do that? He
remembered a game he’d played with his best friend, Aimee, back when he was little.
You looked at special pictures ... blurry dots. And if you relaxed your eyes just right
... a picture emerged.
        He tried it. Relax. Relax your eyes, your mind, don’t try to find any patterns,
let go. He wasn’t sure if he was thinking this or someone was telling him ... Delfinio?
For a long time nothing happened, then, in an instant...
      ...it changed.
      He saw the picture.
        Just for a second. Just a glimpse. He was looking everywhere, all at once, in
all directions, seeing everything. All at once. Then it all dissolved into chaos again.
         “Very good.” Delfinio’s voice sounded in his ear. “I told you. You would see
it. I told you. You are the right one.”
       Jeri blinked, struggling to focus. Delfinio’s face filled his vision, bright with
triumph, close enough to kiss. He shoved away, automatic reaction, and they drifted
apart, Delfinio giggling. The hull slapped his back, and he rebounded before he
could grab for an anchor, his reflexes slow. “What happened?” he mumbled, his
tongue thick, feeling as if he had been drugged.
      “It’s all right. It takes some time for the neural pathways to adjust. It interferes
with speech for a short time.”
      “What interferes?” Fear flooded him.
      “Do you know what Dispatch is?” Delfinio pushed off, did one of his utterly
precise halts in front of Jeri. “Do you understand what just happened?”
      Jeri shook his head no, not trusting his voice.
       Delfinio floated in front of him, his pale eyes full of ... compassion. “We have
a thousand thousand AI eyes out there, from the asteroid belt inward. To look for
rocks falling, for the dropped tool, the bit of broken rubble that will hole a platform
or destroy a shuttle. The eyes look for pirates, illegal shuttles. A million eyes. How
do you think Dispatch works?” Delfinio’s voice was gentle.
      “A ... a program. Looks at all the images. You ... send out the jocks.”
       “No.” Delfinio cupped Jeri’s face between his palms. “That is what the
platform dispatcher teams rely on, but they are too slow. No. You have to see what
needs seeing. A computer ... the best AI ... is too slow. It must look at everything. I
... you ... do not need to. As you learn, you will begin to see only what needs
seeing.”
      Jeri moved his head in a short arc of disbelief.
       “And that is why my pickup line was Ophiuchus.” Delfinio smiled. “Because
the breeze from the stars has to touch you at the right time in your mother’s womb
before you can see what needs seeing. Before you can see with the eyes of the
universe.” He looked sad, suddenly. “It does not touch all its children in the same
way.”
       None of this made any sense and Jeri concentrated on not throwing up and
totally disgracing himself.
       “It is overwhelming ... the first few times.” Delfinio’s hands were on him
again, pushing him gently. “You will find it easier with practice. Sleep now. You
have done enough today. You have dissolved. Now we will begin to put you back
together. This has been a good first lesson.”
       Webbing brushed his face. His hammock. Delfinio webbed him in and his
hands were gentle and too familiar and Jeri didn’t much care. He had never felt this
drained in his life, fell instantly into sleep. Later he woke to Delfinio’s hands again,
this time holding a packet of juice to his lips. He drank it, tasted things in it that
weren’t juice, and went back to sleep. In his dreams he chased after bits of junk that
zipped around as if under power, trying to rip holes in the platforms. And all the time
he chased them, he felt ... attention.
      As if he was not alone.
                                         ****
      Time passed in a blur of exhaustion that never got any better. Jeri woke to
Delfinio’s face, hating him as he forced Jeri to down food that he didn’t taste, then
passworded him in, dissolving him again and again in a universe so vast that
sometimes he thought that he had ceased to exist. Emerging, spent, he ate what
Delfinio placed in his hands, slept, dreamed, and woke to do it all again.
      Each time ... he saw more easily. Each time he saw ... less.
      He stopped seeing everything all at once. In glimpses at first, then more and
more often, the overwhelming images faded away and he saw only the threats. Junk.
Rocks. Once, a ship slipping like a predator between the shadows of the platform
cans where a ship did not belong. He sent out the jocks, that time, with Delfinio’s
supervision. He didn’t dream at night anymore, simply slept.
      And then, one morning, when he passworded in ... it worked.
       He saw it. All of it. From the outer edges of Near Earth Orbit inward, as
familiar as his family’s apartment growing up on NYUp, as familiar as Delfinio’s
face. The little rocks drifting inward stuck out like strangers. Without thinking he
pointed at one that was about to cross into a shipping lane. “Singapore Six,” he said
because they were closest and it was their turn up in the rotation of rock jock teams.
      Gotcha, Six’s dispatcher murmured over Jeri’s implanted com link. On our
way, Dispatch.
      Jeri startled.
       Because it had been ... like breathing. He hadn’t once thought about what he
was doing. And Six’s dispatcher had responded to his point as it showed up on
their direct link. Six had called him “Dispatch.”
        Delfinio wasn’t passworded in. Jeri realized it and quickly passworded out.
No Delfinio. He had vanished. Panic ... totally illogical panic ‘cause where could he
go? ... speared him. Jeri pushed off, somersaulted off the hull beside Delfinio’s
privacy closet, and slapped a palm against the lock plate. The hull cleared and there
he was, webbed into his hammock. Asleep. Holographic letters glowed in a rich,
plum purple in the air beside him.
      It is a big job for one. The platform dispatchers cannot see it all, so it has
been a long time since I have merely slept. It is your shift. We will celebrate when I
wake. Congratulations, Dispatch.
      Jeri toed himself back from the doorway and the hull opaqued behind him.
One alone. He thought about that as he passworded himself back into the system,
skimmed the universe of Near Earth Orbit easily, effortlessly, thoroughly. Felt a
ghostly shimmer through his flesh, as if a breeze passed through his cells,
unhampered.
      “What are you?” he whispered. “What am I?”
      Felt that breeze, but no answer.
       He did the shift and it was a long one. He passworded out to pee, to drink
some juice, to eat something. But always, even when he was out, the images hung
just inside his consciousness, a ghostly overlay on the walls of reality that he
skimmed with the part of his mind that wasn’t busy eating, or peeing, or drinking
juice.
      And he wondered how long Delfinio had lived like this.
       An eternity later, Delfinio reappeared, his eyes gleaming, chuckling to himself
as he selected a huge meal from the kitchen wall. “You’ll have to learn to stop
listening now,” he told Jeri as he sucked at a pint of guava juice. “When you need to
sleep. It will take you some time, but there are two of us now. We will take turns.”
      “I hope I can do it.” Jeri drifted, his head full of the ghostly presence of the
Near Earth universe. “Delfinio ... what is it? What am I feeling?”
       “The voice of the universe?” Delfinio rotated slowly in place. “I’m not
laughing at you. I don’t know either.” He sucked the last drops of guava from the
bag, sailed it into the recycle slot. “You will feel it most strongly when the Earth’s
magnetic field funnels the helium wind down through the gravity well. So perhaps it
is helium atoms speaking?” He took a big bite from a curried tofu slab without losing
a crumb. “But it has changed you, that wind or voice. Forever.” Upside down to
Jeri’s orientation he wagged a finger at him. “You will always see. You will always
know. You have heard that whisper of the universe since your cells began to divide,
but you did not know how to listen or to see. Now, you know.”
      Jeri closed his eyes, trying to banish the ghostly glimmer of Near Earth.
“There’s a bunch of junk ... nearly inside the...”
       “I got it,” Delfinio said with his mouth full. Lost tawny crumbs of curried tofu,
made a face. “I’ll send Dragon Home’s crew out in a moment. It’s not really going
to be a threat for another seventeen minutes. I’m on shift now. Tell yourself that.
Really know it and let go.” Deftly, he snatched crumb after tiny, drifting crumb from
the air, sucking them from his fingertips. “You are very tired. I have exhausted you
for four weeks now.”
      Had it been that long? Blearily, Jeri tried to count days, but they blurred into a
haze of sleeping and trying to sort through images. “It’s going to be like this
forever?”
       “Yes.” Delfinio tossed the empty tofu wrapper into recycle, did one of his
impossible rotations until he faced Jeri on the same orientation. He put his hands on
Jeri’s shoulders, gently, ignoring Jeri’s flinch. “It is not always a burden. Look,” he
said softly. “Not for the junk. Look ... outward.”
       “What do you mean?” Jeri blinked at him, wanting to push away from those
long fingers on his shoulders. “We don’t have sensors out beyond Near Earth.”
       “You don’t understand yet.” Delfinio smiled at him gently, softly, lovingly.
“Just ... look. Look for Saturn. Look past Saturn. You’re not looking for junk. Just
look.”
         Jeri looked. It was like breathing now ... look.
         “No.” Delfinio sounded exasperated. “Stop looking at and just look.”
      Which made no sense. But Delfinio had said Saturn and he knew where it was.
So he looked, remembered how it was when Delfinio first passworded him in to
dissolve, didn’t try to see, just looked out and waited to see what happened.
         Nothing.
         Nothing.
         And then...
       ...the universe opened like a flower unfurling. Stars, galaxies, planets whizzed
past, with glimpses of brown/white/gray/green/blue. He was falling into forever,
heard someone yell, realized dimly it was his voice, felt Delfinio’s arms around him.
         “Look, just look,” Delfinio breathed in his ear. “You’re not lost, you’re right
here.”
         He saw ... forever.
         “Come back now. That’s enough.”
       Jeri blinked, his stomach curling with loss, cramped walls curved around him.
Dumb, he stared into Delfinio’s eyes. Not windows into an alien sky, no. Windows
into forever.
         “It is not always a burden ... finding the trash.” Delfinio kissed him gently on
the forehead. “You get to truly see.”
      “I saw ... worlds,” he whispered. “Blue. That’s water, right?”
       “I don’t know.” Delfinio grinned, showing all his teeth. “I’ve never looked
that close. Why?” His shrug didn’t move him one centimeter. “I can’t go there. You
can look close if you want.”
      He had seen worlds, infinite universes. He thought of the blue and white
planets, the green and tawny ones. Flinched as Delfinio touched him.
      “It’s like getting drunk,” Delfinio said softly. “Only sometimes. Only when
you’re not looking for junk.” Darkness threaded his words ... no ... it was sadness.
“Or you really will dissolve. It will suck out your soul and leave nothing behind.”
      And Jeri shivered, hearing a reason why Delfinio looked for junk alone.
       “I think you will be fine.” Delfinio grinned again, pushed him so that Jeri
drifted toward the little shuttle lock. “Take the shuttle and go back to The Hole. You
did not really celebrate your graduation and you should do that. You do not need to
pay. They will never let you pay, now.” His grin widened. “Set the shuttle on auto
and it will bring you home safely.”
      Home. Jeri looked around the small ovoid of Dispatch. Looked back at
Delfinio. “Thanks,” he said and hesitated, because he had been about to refuse.
“Yeah, I’ll go.”
      “Go get drunk. Find Zai. She had her eye on you.” Delfinio cackled. “When
you’re all done, it’s my turn. It has been a long time since I have drunk bitter beer at
The Hole.”
        “What happened to your last trainee?” Jeri paused outside the shuttle. “Or am
I the first?”
      “Oh, not the first.” Delfinio looked away.
      When it became clear he wasn’t going to say more, Jeri left.
                                     ****
       It was as Delfinio said. He pushed into The Hole and Sanya and Jorges were
there with some of their off-duty NYUp teammates drinking beer and being as silly
as Jeri remembered from training. They hollered and whooped when they saw him
and the barkeep handed him a bag of beer as he made his way over to them through
the crowded bar and waved away his attempt to pay. He had had no time for the G
gym and even the slight gravity of The Hole dragged at him and made his joints ache.
        “Hey, this is our buddy from training.” Sanya slapped him on the back, three
tiny lightfiber roses gleaming on her left arm. Hits. “Hey, send me after some good
stuff, will you?” She laughed. “I want something better than lost wrenches and junk.
You guys, Jeri’s Dispatch, can you believe it?”
      They had no idea what Dispatch really was, but they were suitably impressed
and for a time, he and Sanya and Jorges traded training stories of stupid mistakes,
pranks, and good hits. He drank the beer and it was fun for awhile.
       But it wasn’t the same. He caught their brief sideways looks, read the hint of
tension in Jorges’ shoulders. He didn’t belong here. The talk had turned to gossip
and orbital politics and Jeri sat listening, looking into the invisible bubble of
camaraderie. Outsider. Silently he finished his beer. Everything hurt with a subtle
nagging ache and in spite of the buzz of beer in blood, the images of platforms,
shuttles, and drifting bits of old stars lurked like a mist between him and the others
as Jorge told a joke about some teammate’s bad luck with love and everybody
laughed.
      “Hey, it’s the new Dispatch.”
      Jeri looked up at the familiar voice.
       “Hey, Zai.” Sanya waved her over, respect in her tone as well as in the curve
of her shoulders. “Jeri was in training with us. Jeri, this is Zai. She’s NYUp’s
Number One Team leader.”
      “Yeah, we’ve met,” Jeri said as the tall jock carried her beer over. She had a
few new tattoos, and her eyes met his, gleaming with laughter and maybe something
more as she perched in a hammock next to him.
      “I guess Delfinio’s happy with you.” She winked. “Congratulations.”
      “What about this Delfinio?” Jorges cracked his third beer. “Is he one of those
weird Gypsies like I’ve heard, Jeri? Creepy.”
       With a single, fluid movement, Zai caught Jorges’s foot and flipped him
backward out of his hammock. He landed hard, even in the slight gravity, his beer
skidding across the stained floor, trailing lacey foam. “Watch your mouth, newbie,”
Zai said very softly.
      “Sorry.” Jorges scrambled to his feet, rubbing the back of his head, his
expression nervous. “Look, I’m really sorry.” His glance skidded from teammate to
teammate, finding no supporters. “I didn’t mean...”
       “Don’t say what you don’t mean.” Zai turned her back on him. “Dispatch, I’d
be honored to buy you a beer.” She winked at Jeri, a bit of a leer in that wink. “Let’s
take it up to the hub garden, eh? My friend works there and I have a pass.”
       They collected fresh beers and left The Hole and Jeri was aware of some
envious stares from the other jocks. Zai indeed had a pass, so they rode one of the
elevators up to the core of the huge, rotating can that was the NYUp platform. Here,
thickly planted hydroponic tubes turned the hub into a jungle of leaves, fruits, and
vegetables in the hot, bright glare of Sol. In the green-gold light filtering through the
leaves, they drank their beer and Zai pulled him to her, stripping him out of his
singlesuit with casual, lustful purpose, her grin easy and bright with sex.
      It didn’t work. Not really. It was there, between them, the slow spin of the
planets, the cans, the ships and shuttles and junk.
      “Your mind’s not on your work, sweetheart.” Zai drifted with her arms
around his waist, her cheek against his hip. “Sorry I couldn’t distract you.”
       “It wasn’t you.” Jeri’s face was on fire, figured he was probably blushing
clear down to his toes. Felt so ... so... “I just...” He shook his head because how
could you explain?
       “Hey, when you get focused...” Zai pushed off, drifted a scant meter looking
for her singlesuit, ... “look me up.” She snagged it and kicked off toward the
elevator, her singlesuit trailing from one hand.
       Jeri stared after her, a metallic taste in his mouth. Pulled on his singlesuit,
collected the empty beer bags and followed her to the elevator. He dropped down to
the level where he had docked the shuttle and let it take him back to Dispatch.
                                            ****
       Delfinio was drifting in the center of Dispatch, his eyes glazed with seeing. He
blinked to awareness as Jeri exited the shuttle, sighed and for once, didn’t say
anything.
       “I tried to celebrate, Delfinio.” Jeri let himself drift, upside down to Delfinio’s
orientation. He made no move to shift and match it. “It didn’t work.”
       Still without speaking, Delfinio did one of his rotations, ended up eye to eye
with Jeri.
       “You knew it wouldn’t, didn’t you?” Jeri swallowed. “It’s like there’s a wall
between me and everyone else.” His voice trembled and he gulped in air, willed it to
steady. “It’s like I can’t touch anyone. I’m not really living in their world. Like
there’s a sheet of glass between us.” He sucked in a breath. “What did you do to
me?”
     “I am sorry.” Delfinio’s eyes, windows to forever, looked past him. At
something Jeri couldn’t see.
      “I can’t do this.” Jeri spat the words through his teeth. “I won’t do this. I
wanted to be a rock jock. Do my part. Keep everyone safe. I didn’t want...” He
gulped, sucked breath. “I didn’t ask to be turned into ... into...”
       “Some kind of alien?” Delfinio smiled finally, his eyes windows into vacuum.
“I did not ask to be born in the wind from the stars or to hear their voices either,
Jeri. Gypsies. You’ve heard me called that by now, eh?” Delfinio smiled thinly.
“When my people, my family, left the platforms and moved out to the Oort, do you
think I remained behind because of the pay?” He bared his teeth at Jeri. “How many
‘Gypsies’ have you seen on the platforms? We do not belong here and we do not
live here. You are what you are. I did not make you this way. But I showed you how
you can matter. How many people truly matter, child? No. You will never belong
anywhere ... except here. I’m sorry and yes. I knew the price. I did not ask you if
you wanted to pay it.” His eyes touched Jeri with cold. “It is a lonely job.”
     Shuttle approaching, the system voice spoke up. IDed as friend, personal
name Shira.
      Delfinio blinked, his eyes narrowing briefly. “I have company,” he snapped
and Jeri recoiled from his sudden anger. “Perhaps you are right and you do not
belong here.”
         “Wait a minute.” Jeri pushed closer. “I need to understand. You said it’s too
late.”
       “Leave now.” Delfinio’s eyes blazed. “You will take the shuttle back to NYUp
now. Stay there over night, think about what you are and how you wish to fit into
this universe. We will talk about your future after that.”
      “No.” Jeri pushed forward. “I want to sort this out now. I want to
understand.”
      “And I don’t want to explain. You are an annoying child.” Delfinio pushed
forward, so that Jeri retreated involuntarily. “Go now, child, and give me peace for
my company. He has no reason to be annoyed by your problems.” He turned his
back on Jeri.
       “Fine.” Stung beyond words, Jeri palmed open the lock and pulled himself
back into the little shuttle. So that was it? You are what you are, too bad, and don’t
bother me when I’m busy? He closed his eyes, but Zai’s expression appeared
against the darkness of his eyelids. When you get focused, she had said. Only he
never would. Jeri gave a bitter laugh, passworded in, started to push off, head for
NYUp. Go find a bar where nobody knew him and get seriously, stinking drunk, he
thought. If nothing else, it might hurt less. For awhile. Then he hesitated, feeling like
a kid sent off to bed so the grown-ups could talk. Pushed close to the lock door,
touched the tiny viewscreen to life. Who was this friend whom Jeri would annoy?
         Peeping tom, he thought. Delfinio will know.
       So what? he thought and didn’t blank the screen. A silvery chime announced
that a shuttle had mated to the Dispatch module. Delfinio floated where Jeri had left
him, hadn’t moved. The hull shimmered and thinned to form a port and a small, wiry
man with a tawny Bengali face dressed in an expensive spider-silk singlet drifted in.
He had gym muscles and a big smile.
       “‘Finio. It has been a long time.” Shira toed off from the lock. “Bet you’re
surprised to see me,” he said with a Euro accent.
      “I am.” Delfinio didn’t move. “I heard a few rumors about your new life.”
      “They were probably correct. I am surprised that you did not delete my
personal signature from your security waiver.”
       “I should have done that. I suppose ... I let friendship blind me.” He didn’t
smile. “It was a mistake, was it not?”
       “You are getting old, ‘Finio. Once you did not make mistakes.” The Euro
Bengali smiled, closing on Delfinio. “You have always believed that this talent
implies ethics. That is your blind spot, old man. I sold my soul to Tai Lan the pirate.
He paid me very well for it. And I am very useful to him. I find all the Security
patrols for him. Only lately, someone has been finding my boss’s ships and sending
jocks after them. You are bad for business, ‘Finio. Why are you interfering?”
      “You are wrong about my belief,” Delfinio cackled and drifted suddenly
backward. “I am less blind than you believe. And every awakened talent is my
responsibility. Forever, Shira. So what is your soul worth?”
       “Your life.” The Bengali thrust himself forward and Jeri caught a flash of
bright steel. Then the two men rebounded, Delfinio’s back arching spasmodically, a
bright, crimson galaxy of blood droplets unfolding between them.
      For a frozen moment, Jeri could only watch.
      “Get out,” Delfinio rasped, doubling over, trailing ruby beads.
      He was speaking to Jeri. The words hit him as if Delfinio had slapped him
across the face.
       And Shira’s head came up, eyes narrowing, searching. “You found another
one, old man?” He pushed off from the hull with a toe, arrowed toward the privacy
closets with a predator’s intent.
      Delfinio’s shoulders hunched as he curled into a fetal position. “Now, fool,”
he whispered.
      Jeri thawed. “Take off,” he snapped and the shuttle quivered to life, shoving
him against the hull as it pushed away from Dispatch. “NYUp dock regular space.
NYUP One, contact. One! Attack on Dispatch. Get a team out here now.
Weapons.”
      No response. None.
      Communication is blocked, the shuttle voice told him.
      It quivered and zagged sharply. Jeri bounced off the hull, slammed back
against it as acceleration flattened him.
      Evasive action, the ship said. Threat detected. Communication damper
detected. Instructions?
      Shira was after him. “Status,” he yelled.
      Closing fast.
       Shira would use some sort of close-range, low energy weapon to avoid
detection by the sensor net. Serious weaponry would set off all kinds of alarms and
make people notice Dispatch’s silence. But all Shira had to do was punch a hole in
the hull. That’s why you wore a v-suit as a rock jock. And this shuttle didn’t have
one. Think fast. Jeri’s head spun. What would Shira expect him to do? Run for a
can. “Head sunward,” Jeri snapped. “Full acceleration.” He wasn’t webbed in and
the sudden change in direction flung him across the cabin one more time. Red and
black stars exploded in his vision as he slammed face-first into the hull.
      Closing fast. The shuttle’s voice didn’t change.
      Damn it. Nothing, nothing, nothing he could do.
       And then ... the hull vanished. It was like he had passworded into Dispatch.
He could see ... everything. The matte black little ship coming up fast behind him,
the huge blaze of the sun, a million million suns beyond it. For a second, Jeri
relaxed. If I have to die, he thought ... A flare on the blazing surface of the sun
caught his eye. He looked and his vision sharpened, as if someone had turned up the
resolution. From the lazy curl of the sun’s huge, fiery tongue, something like a
swarm of tiny dust specks burst toward him.
      For a moment, Jeri stared, squinting, trying to understand....
       ...proton storm. He got it, suddenly. A Super-X class event. The last one like
this had happened before he was born. People had died. Usually you had warning.
Usually, coronal mass ejections tossed protons out slowly, predictably. Usually you
had time to get everyone in behind the ice-shields and radiation skins of the
platforms.
       But three times since the platforms began, they had come out fast, in a wild
spray, caught in the spiraled magnetic field of the sun, and had slashed across Near
Earth like a sword of God.
       I can’t be seeing this, Jeri thought. No password, no hardware to plug him
into the sensor net. People would die. A lot of people. “New York One,” he yelled in
desperation. “Read me?”
      Yeah, Dispatch, what’s up?
      Miracle! He wanted to cry. The voice was so damn normal. Either the
communication damper had failed or ... Jeri glanced over his shoulder, but Shira was
still on his butt. “Super X protons coming. Get everyone in,” he yelled. “Now!”
      No more time, no more time.... These little shuttles didn’t have shielding, you
weren’t out in this kind of stuff. Which would get him first? he wondered. Protons
or whatever weapon Shira was carrying?
      And then he saw it. A ‘roid, a rocky lump, stable in orbit, out of the traffic
zones, so nobody cared as it plodded its way around the sun.
       It would stop the protons. Enough anyway.
       Got to get the timing right ... got to ... he grabbed for the webbing, got himself
more or less webbed in, shifted the shuttle to manual, hands on the holoed controls
that appeared. Zigged. Zagged. Evasive maneuvers, but they brought him closer to
the ‘roid. Not yet, not yet ... he could feel Shira’s triumph and his back twitched,
expecting vacuum. With his new vision he watched the sandstorm of sun-white
particles speeding toward them. If Shira had the same sight—but maybe he was
focused on Jeri.
       He hoped so.
       Not yet ... not yet. Sweating, Jeri held his course. Now! He imagined he could
feel the crackle of a million electron volts of cell-destroying energy around him as he
doubled back, nearly sideswiping Shira’s ship as he darted into the shadow of the
‘roid.
      Nothing to see, nothing you could really feel. Red icons exploded in the
control holos. Beyond the shadow of the rock he was hiding under, the energies
climbed ... two hundred million electron volts, two-fifty. Caught in the full sweep of
the sun’s fierce burst, Shira’s ship wavered and began to tumble. Something had
gone out. How much rem was Shira absorbing in his light, unprotected ship, Jeri
wondered. Three hundred rem? Four hundred?
       In hours, he would be dead. Nothing could save him now.
       “New York One?” Jeri said.
       Communication software was permanently disabled at launch, the ship told
him.
       Jeri blinked. He called up the ship’s log, ran through the communications. He
found his original attempt to contact NYUp One, iconed incomplete. And no others.
I talked to them, Jeri thought. I warned them. Without a link?
       Not possible.
     The storm-front had passed. Jeri waited for the energy levels to fall to
something he could tolerate with radiation therapy afterward, images of Delfinio
bleeding to death alone at Dispatch haunting his brain. At least Dispatch was
shielded. More than adequately. As soon as he dared, he headed back.
      He didn’t see Shira’s ship.
       Delfinio drifted in a galaxy of dark crimson droplets when Jeri burst into
Dispatch. Swearing, Jeri pushed off, relief spiking through him as his hands closed
around Delfinio’s shoulders and his brain registered warm. Clumsy in his hurry, he
barely managed to shield Delfinio from impact as he rebounded off the hull,
scattering ruby beads of fresh blood.
      Delfinio grunted and his eyes fluttered. His lips twitched into an almost-smile
before pain twisted them.
       “Just hang on.” Jeri palmed the emergency med closet open. The
coffin-shaped créche unfolded and Jeri maneuvered Delfinio into it. Shira had
stabbed him in the chest. “You die on me and I’ll ... I’ll kill you. Hear me?”
       Delfinio’s lips twitched again and the smile glimmered in his eyes for a
second. Micro-tubes snaked out of the créche, probing like blind worms, burrowing
into Delfinio’s jugular, carotid, into the veins on his arms and thighs as Jeri webbed
him into place. “You’re going to be okay,” he said, his voice catching, ignoring the
red icons glimmering on the sides of the créche. “You have to be, because I want to
know what’s happening to me. You owe me that, hear?”
      “I hear.” Delfinio’s words emerged as the faintest of whispers and pink foam
bubbled at the corners of his lips. Then the drugs pumping through the micro-tubes
took over and his eyes glazed.
      Panicked, Jeri scanned the icons, but Delfinio was still alive, his heartbeat
uneven, more red and yellow than green visible, but ... still alive. “Contact ... NYUp
One,” he said.
      Dispatch? That you, Jeri? The voice at One nearly yelled. Man, you saved
our butts with that warning. We’ve got sick people all over, but we would’ve had a
lot more casualties if we hadn’t hit the alarm. Way to go.
      “Get a med team out here,” Jeri said. “Pirate hit Dispatch. Delfinio’s in bad
shape.”
      On our way. One’s voice sobered. Be there before you can blink twice.
      Oh, I do not think you need to worry, Delfinio’s voice murmured in his head.
I do not think you will be stuck on Dispatch without me.
      He couldn’t be talking, not with the catheters in him. Jeri pushed across to the
créche. The icons glowed a cacophony of red.
      “Damn it, you can’t leave me here by myself.”
      And he could have sworn that Delfinio smiled.
      Or maybe he just felt it.
      I agree, Dispatch. The whisper touched him. And the breeze will blow
through others, too. You will find them. Not all will be Shira. But it is a lonely job.
       Jeri lifted his head and looked ... outward. Beyond the slow spin of the
platforms to the distant dance of suns and planets like multicolored jewels. With a
wrench, he brought himself back. Then he simply waited for the rock jocks to arrive,
surrounded by a drifting galaxy of drying blood and crystal tears.
      Copyright (c) 2007 Mary Rosenblum