Theres nothing hi about my story, I told him. Its essentially lo and for the moment, quite lost.
He frowned, unable to see the joke for a few moments. Then he got it, and tried to contrive a weak smile. I couldnt blame him for his lack of amusement. Some jokes are best kept private.
Even so, he said, wed be very interested. Youre a unique resource, whose experiences will be even more interesting in juxtaposition with those of your companions.
All three of us were unique, even though we were in the same boat, because wed come from different eras: we made up quite a goodie bag for a historian. There were thousands more of us still to be thawed, but every one would be unique from Mortimer Grays point of view.
Ill think it over, I assured the historian. Ill come back to you when I have more questions.
I wanted to talk to Solantha Handsel, but I didnt get the chance. The party was already winding down over, it seemed, almost as soon as it had begun because Michael Lowenthal had decided that he had had enough, and that it was time to let the sisterhood whisk him away.
I didnt see the Earthpeople again until the following day. Even Christine absented herself for a while, although she reappeared when the time came to watch the real spaceship coming into dock.
That, apparently, was the kind of experience she liked to share or one of them, at any rate.
Seventeen
The Cyborganizers
Christine hadnt exaggerated when she had rhapsodized about how much more impressive the ship from the Outer System would be than the ferry that had arced across the diameter of the Earths orbit. Child of Fortune was at least thirty times as big as Peppercorn Seven , and there was not the least possibility that the neatly chiseled workings on its surface might be mistaken for incompetent molding or accidental scratching. It didnt have fins, but it did have what looked to me like a massive pair of furled wings.
Although the station looked like a chimerical sea creature, the ship from the Jovian moons had the air of an authentic flier: a bird that was merely bobbing on the surface of the ocean, quite able to transform itself into something altogether more spectacular. Because it was decelerating, Child of Fortune was headed toward us hind end first, its fuser doubtless spitting out the last few gobs of reaction mass with the utmost discretion. It bore a faint and temporary resemblance to a massive whale or basking shark, with its mouth wide open, but everything about its design proclaimed that it was a much finer creature than that.
When Excelsior had extended its tentacles toward the Earth ship the microworld had been a huge scavenger gobbling up a stray morsel, but when it reached out to touch the Outer System vessel it was more like a tentative greeting between alien equals, albeit of very different sizes and shapes.
How many people are aboard? I asked Christine, figuring that I might as well take advantage of her research.
About sixty, apparently, she told me. The permanent crew is about fifty strong. Theyre fabers I think theyll disembark in shifts, but only as far as the microworlds core.
She was presumably right, but the umbilicals established between ship and station were much more substantial than those connected to Peppercorn Seven . It was impossible to see individuals passing through them.
I was even more curious about Niamh Hornes delegation than I had been about Lowenthals, and I couldnt help feeling aggrieved that they didnt show anything like the same alacrity in calling on us.
Christine and I waited until it would have seemed absurd to wait any longer, then returned to our separate researches in the virtual world, half-hoping that giving up would somehow function as a catalyst and precipitate the expected meeting.
It didnt.
I had been immersed in solitary visions of Titan and Ganymede for more than two hours when the visitors finally arrived and when they did, there were only two of them, in addition to Davida Berenike Columella.
At least I was spared the ultimate indignity
of talking to a flunky. Niamh Horne had the grace to appear in person. She also had the grace to let Davida perform the introductions in a sensible ceremonial fashion. Her companion was a male named Theoderic Conwin.
Niamh Horne and Theoderic Conwin were both cyborgs, but I saw immediately if slightly belatedly what Mortimer Gray had meant about the difference between functional and ornamental cyborganization. I had taken Solantha Handsel for a bodyguard because her modifications had been shaped and coordinated to display the suggestion that she was half fighting machine, but I realized now how ostentatious her adaptations were.
There was nothing manifestly obtrusive or calculatedly suggestive about the modifications that had been made to the two Titanians. It required close and considered inspection to determine that their outer teguments were much thicker than the additional skins Davida and I were wearing, because they were camouflaged to give an appearance of real skin and conventional clothing. Their eyes and ears, though artificial, were similarly formed to resemble their natural counterparts. It was impossible to judge exactly how much their seeming solidity owed to the bulk of their smartsuits, but I formed the impression that within their relatively stout frames there were two unfashionably thin individuals making no effort whatsoever to get out.