Thorns

SEVENTEEN: TAKE UP THESE SPLINTERS

Somewhat higher than the atmosphere Chalk soared. He looked upon his world and found it good. The seas were green verging on blue, or blue verging on green, and it seemed to him that he could discern icebergs adrift. The land was brown in winter’s grip, to the north; summer-green lay below the curving middle.

He spent much of his time in lower space. It was the best way, the most esthetically satisfying way, of shunning gravity. Perhaps his pilot felt distress, for Chalk did not permit the use of reverse gravitrons up here, nor even any centrifuging to provide the illusion of weight. But his pilot was paid well enough to endure such discomforts, if discomforts they were.

For Chalk it was not remotely a discomfort to be weightless. He had his mass, his wonderful brontosaurian mass, and yet he had none of the drawbacks thereof.

“This is one of the few instances,” he said to Burris and the girl, “where one can legitimately get something for nothing. Consider: when we blast off, we dissipate the gravity of acceleration through gravitrons, so that the extra Gs are squirted away and we rise in comfort. There’s no effort for us in getting where we are, no price to pay in extra weight before we can be weightless. When we land, we treat the deceleration problem the same way. Normal weight, weightless, normal again, and no flattening at any time.”

“But is it free?” Lona asked. “I mean, it must cost a lot to run the gravitrons. When you balance everything out, the expense of starting and stopping, you haven’t really had anything for nothing, have you?”

Chalk, amused, looked at Burris. “She’s very clever, did you realize that?”

“So I’ve been noticing.”

Lona reddened. “You’re making fun of me.”

“No, we aren’t,” said Burris. “You’ve hit quite independently on the notion of conservation of gravity, don’t you see? But you’re being too strict with our host. He’s looking at things from his point of view. If he doesn’t have to feel the buildup of Gs himself, it doesn’t cost him anything in the realest sense of the word. Not in terms of enduring high G. The gravitrons absorb all that. Look, it’s like committing a crime, Lona, and paying someone else to go through rehabilitation. Sure, it costs you cash to find a rehab substitute. But you’ve had your crime, and he takes the punishment. The cash equivalent—”

“Let it go,” Lona said. “It’s nice up here, anyway.”

“You like weightlessness?” Chalk asked. “Have you ever experienced it before?”

“Not really. A few short trips.”

“And you, Burris? Does the lack of gravity help your discomforts any?”

“A little, thanks. There’s no drag on the organs that aren’t where they really ought to be. I don’t feel that damned pulling in my chest. A small mercy, but I’m grateful.”

Nevertheless, Burris was still in his bath of pain, Chalk noticed. Perhaps more tepid, but not enough. What was it like to feel constant physical discomfort? Chalk knew a little of that, simply through the effort of hauling his body around in full gravity. But he had been bloated so long. He was accustomed to the steady aching pull. Burris, though? The sensations of nails being hammered into his flesh? He did not protest. Only now and then did the bitter rebellion surge to the surface. Burris was improving, learning to accommodate to what was for him the human condition. Chalk, sensitive as he was, still picked up the emanations of pain. Not merely psychic pain. Physical pain, too. Burris had grown calmer, had risen from the black pit of depression in which Aoudad had first encountered him, but he was far from any beds of roses.

The girl, comparatively, was in better shape, Chalk concluded. She was not quite so intricate a mechanism.

They looked happy side by side, Burris and the girl.

That would change, of course, as time went on.

“You see Hawaii?” Chalk asked. “And there, by the edge of the world: China. The Great Wall. We’ve had it restored, a good deal of it. See, running inland from the sea just above that gulf. Passing north of Peking, up into those mountains. The middle section is gone, the Ordos desert stretch. But then it was never very much, just a line of mud. And beyond, toward Sinkiang, see it coming up now? We have several party centers along the Wall. A new one opening just on the Mongolian side shortly. Kublai Khan’s Pleasure Dome.” Chalk laughed. “But not stately. Anything but stately.”

They were holding hands, Chalk observed.

He concentrated on picking up their emotions. Nothing useful yet. From the girl came a kind of mild, squashy contentment, a blank maternal sort of thing. Yes, she would. And from Burris? Not much of anything, so far. He was relaxed, more relaxed than Chalk had yet seen him to be. Burris liked the girl. She amused him, obviously. He enjoyed the attention she gave him. But he did not have any strong feeling toward her; he did not really think very much of her as a person. Soon she would be powerfully in love with him. Chalk thought it unlikely that the emotion would be reciprocated. Out of that difference in voltages an interesting current might be generated, Chalk surmised. A thermocouple effect, so to speak. We will see.

The ship hurtled westward over China, past the Kansu Panhandle, orbiting over the Old Silk Road.

Chalk said, “I understand that you two will be leaving on your travels tomorrow. So Nick tells me.”

“That’s right. The itinerary’s arranged,” said Burris.

“I can’t wait. I’m so awfully excited!” Lona cried.

The schoolgirl blurt of words annoyed Burris. Chalk, well attuned to their shifting moods now, dug his receptors into the flash of irritation that rolled from him and gobbled it down. The burst of emotion was a sudden rent in a seamless velvet veil. A jagged dark streak across pearly gray smoothness. A beginning, Chalk thought. A beginning.

“It should be quite a trip,” he said. “Billions of people wish you well.”