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“I
remember.”
    “Will they make me go back? Will you?” Laenea
said. “I’m all right, I just need to get used to it.”
    “We won’t, but they might try to,”
Ramona-Teresa said. “They worry so about the money they spend on us.
Perhaps they aren’t quite as worried anymore. We do as well on our own as
shut up in a hospital listening to recorded hearts — they still do that,
I suppose.”
    Laenea shuddered. “It worked for you, they told me
— but I broke the speaker.”
    Miikala laughed with delight. “Causing all other
machines to make frantic noises like frightened little mice.”
    “I thought they hadn’t done the operation.
I’ve wanted to be one of you for so long —” Feeling stronger,
Laenea pushed herself up. She left her vest open, glad of the cool air against
her skin.
    “We watched,” Miikala said. “We watch you
all, but a few are special. We knew you’d come to us. Do you remember
this one, Ramona?”
    “Yes.” She picked up one of the extra glasses,
filled it from a shaker, and handed it to Laenea. “You always fought the
sleep, my dear. Sometimes I thought you might wake.”
    “Ahh, Ramona, don’t frighten the child.”
    “Frighten her, this tigress?”
    Strangely enough, Laenea was not disturbed by the knowledge
that she had been close to waking in transit. She had not, or she would be
dead; she would have died quickly of old age, her body bound to normal time and
normal space, to the relation between time dilation and velocity and distance
by a billion years of evolution, by rhythms planetary, lunar, solar,
biological: subatomic, for all Laenea or anyone else knew. She was freed of all
that now.
    She downed half her drink in a single swallow. The air felt
cold against her bare arms and her breasts, so she wrapped her cloak around her
shoulders and waited for the satin to warm against her body.
    “When’s your training flight?”
    “Not for a whole month.” The time seemed a vast
expanse of emptiness. She had finished the study and the training; now only her
mortal body kept her earthbound.
    “They want you completely healed.”
    “It’s too long — how can they expect me to
wait until then?”
    “For the need.”
    “I want to know what happens, I have to find out.
When’s your next flight?”
    “Soon,” Ramona-Teresa said.
    “Take me with you!”
    “No, my dear. It would not be proper.”
    “Proper! We have to make our own rules, not follow
theirs. They don’t know what’s right for us.”
    Miikala and Ramona-Teresa looked at each other for a long
time. Perhaps pilots could speak together with their eyes and their
expressions, or perhaps Ramona and Miikala simply understood each other in the
way of any ordinary long-time lovers. But they excluded Laenea.
    “No.” Ramona’s tone invited no argument.
    “At least you can tell me —” She saw at
once that she had said the wrong thing. The pilots’ expressions closed
down in silence. But Laenea felt neither guilt nor contrition, only anger.
    “It isn’t because you can’t! You talk
about it to each other, I know that now at least. You can’t tell me you
don’t.”
    “No,” Miikala said. “We will not say we
never speak of it.”
    “You’re selfish and you’re cruel.”
She stood up, for a moment afraid she might stagger again and have to accept
their help. Ramona and Miikala nodded at each other, with faint, infuriating
smiles. A surge of brittle energy raised Laenea far beyond needing them.
    “She has the need,” one of them said, Laenea did
not even know which one. The ringing in her ears cut her off from them. She
turned her back, climbed out of the conversation pit, and stalked away to find
a more congenial spot.
    She chose a sitting place nestled into a steep slope very
close to the sea wall. She could feel the ocean’s coolness, as though the
cold radiated, rather than heat. Grotesque creatures floated past in the
spotlights. Laenea curled up and relaxed, making her smooth pulse wax and