Riding the Torch

Author:Norman Spinrad
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Sff
ISBN: 2940000124567
Publisher: Renaissance E Books
Published: 1974-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IV

The scoutship came in tail-first on a long shallow arc over the hydrogen interface, still decelerating. Tapping Bela-37’s visual frequency, Jofe D’mahl saw the ships of the Trek suddenly appear in all their glory as the scoutship passed the auroral wavefront, as if the interface were a rainbow curtain going up on a vast ballet of motion and light.

Thousands of shining cylinders hung in the blackness, their surfaces jeweled with multicolored lights. The space between them coruscated and shone with shuttle exhausts and a haze of subtle reflections off thousands of moving voidbubbles. The thin purple wake of the Trek cut an ethereal swath of manifested motion and time through the eternal immobile nothingness.

The Trek seemed larger and lovelier than even D’mahl’s memory had made it during the long sullen trip hack. Its light drove back the everlasting darkness, its complexity shattered the infinite sameness of the void; it danced in the spotlight of its own brilliance. It was alive. It was beautiful. It was home.

Bandoora had calculated well; as Bela-37 passed stemward of the Trek, its relative velocity dwindled away to zero and it hung in space about twenty kilometers behind the great concourse of ships. Bandoora turned the scoutship end-for-end and began to ease it toward the Trek, toward its eventual parking slot just behind the hydrogen interface. D’mahl broke his tap with the scout’s visual frequency and lay on the g-plate in his room for a long moment staring into the starfield holo before him for the last time.

Then, like a lover reaching for remembered flesh after a long parting, like a man rising out of a long coma toward the dawning light, he tapped Jiz Rumoku.

He was sitting at a clear glass table sipping an icy blue beverage out of a pewter mug, washing down a swallow of lavender sponge. Across the table, Varn Kamenev was pouring himself another mugful from a matching pitcher. The table was on a disk of clear plex, floating, like dozens of others, through what seemed like a topless and bottomless forest of ivy. He didn’t recognize the restaurant, but didn’t bother to tap for it.

“Home is the hero,” he said with Jiz’s throat and lips, feeling her body warm to his presence.

“Jof! Where are you, what happened, let me tap—”

“Wait for the flesh, Jiz,” he told her. “I’ll be in your gallery within two hours. I wanted you to be the first, but I’ve got to zip-tap my way back to realities before I die of thirst.”

“But what was it like—”

“Miles and miles of miles and miles,” he said, feeling a surge of exhilaration at the thought that he was with someone who could and would tap for the reference. “Next year in Jerusalem,” he said with her mouth. He kissed her hand with her lips and broke the tap.

And zip-tapped through the changes like a random search program for the phantom tapper.

He was Para Running, soaring naked in a low-g dive into a pool of fragrant rose-colored water heated to body temperature.

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