Two days before the race, we converged on Damor City.
The overflow shipyard of the city's port was mainly grass, and setting an aircar down on it -- let alone a starship -- raised a puff of sunlit dirt each time. Nobody seemed to mind. I'd spent the subsequent morning working with Jaya and Pach, running down the last of his inspection checklist and sorting out his fuel situation. Now the three of us sat on a grubby tarp and ate the late lunch we'd bought from a refreshment cart. Those carts rolled up and down the well-organised rows of parked ships, distributing water and selling everything from sandwiches to screwdrivers. Over the sounds of conversation and energetic laughter, I could hear two or three different types of music and the intermittent roar of engines.
Pach's ship was in perfect condition. I could tell he was finally satisfied.
"What are you going to do until tonight?" I asked.
"Wander up and down the rows, see who's flying what," he replied. "Annoy the competition."
"There's some fine ships here. I wish I could go around with you, but I have to meet Zael in the port," said Jaya. "Soon, actually."
"I'll walk with you," I said, standing up. "I need to pick up a few things to take back to Southport tomorrow."
Pach stood up too, and surprised me by giving us both hugs. "I know I'll see you tonight, but this seems like a good time to say thank you. I've got a good feeling about this."
We embraced him back, and promised to meet in the Park by sundown. I took one last look at the golden sunlight painting the edges of the Yanakoya, then turned toward the main port of Damor.
It took us a while to get there. Jaya and I both stopped to talk to everyone we knew, and I introduced her to a couple of pilots she hadn't met. Eventually, we crossed the pedestrian bridge over the wide transport road. White trains with bright purple running lights shot by beneath us, sometimes two or three at a time. Then we went down into the cool shadows of the Port complex. It was far more impressive near the front entrance, than by the older terminal the pilots had unofficially claimed. The enormous white shells and arcs flowed around and through each other, lined with black-tinted windows to keep out the sun. We skirted along the side of the main buildings, avoiding the denser-than-usual crowds. Near the southern edge, the hangar-shaped structure of the Navigational Communications building only seemed modest compared to the intersection of transport arches high above it.
Jaya and I passed under a few flat-roofed seating areas on our way to the front doors. There were people from absolutely everywhere in the system, in different interpretations of pilot's garb. It energised me to see it. I glanced at Jaya, and it seemed to be having the same effect. Her eyes were bright, and she was already pulling various pieces of tech out of her bag, attaching them to her temple and the shoulder of her suit. The bright green hair she kept was freshly coloured, and it contrasted pleasantly with her flushed cheeks.
Inside the NavComm building a quiet madhouse reigned. Extra tables had been lined up along one wall for equipment rental, and I figured I'd try those first.
"Do you know where you're going?" Jaya asked.
I pointed. "Over there, I think. If not, I'll ask around. No hurry."
She nodded. "I'll be in the simulator room Zael rented, if you need me. Probably until tonight."
"Alright." We parted, and I set out across the crush of people, locals and visitors alike, in the wide hall.
It took ages, and wasting time in three different queues, before I was able to pick up the equipment Pach had borrowed for us. It was simply additional tech to add on to the Southport navigational array. Since I'd be connecting to my pilot out of a smaller spaceport than those in the City or on Roxi, this was to ensure that we had all the same advantages as other ground crews. I peeked into the crate. It all smelled brand new. Theoretically, we'd have to give it back once the race was over. But the City never seemed in a big hurry to reclaim the tech they lent to smaller ports. There were still items at Southport from several years back.
I took the parts to the modest hotel room I'd rented at the port for a couple of nights. It was absolutely basic -- the better rooms had long been reserved by visitors coming to see the action. But it suited me fine. I would be in and out of here, and back to Arind's tomorrow to set up.
And -- I reminded myself -- to get through that call with the Trium.
I hadn't told anyone but Jasha about that message. If it ended up going horribly, well, no matter. Everything was a data point. The race would be the day after that, and I had every reason to forget about any distractions. It would take all the skill and concentration I had to help Pach pull this off. I wanted him to at least place as high as he had before. It would be harder this year -- there were more pilots in this race than ever before.
I put the crate of electronics down on the built-in dresser, and stretched out on the single bed. It was firm but comfortable. I had some time to catch a nap before meeting the others in the park this evening. Suddenly I was reminded of the week I'd spent too nervous to open up my own hyperdrive, and instead had tiptoed around the box in the centre of my bedroom. Whatever else had changed this summer, my heart felt lighter about my own flights. That drive would have its time. I was sure of it. I could almost feel the pieces coming together inside me.
The lavender lanterns on the beachfront were just flaring into life as the taxi turned above them. I listened idly for the ping of traffic control. When the lanes were clear, the driverless aircar dropped down and angled left over the darkening sea east of the city. The sunset lingered in a pink and violet gradient, and chains of tiny red car-lights carried the colour down to the streets. Behind the great wide beach boulevard, the Park stretched massive and quiet into the far centre of downtown.
The taxi touched down at the designated spot near the road. Mindful of the waiting traffic, I tapped the pay screen and got out.
This pre-race meeting had become an informal tradition for us a few years ago. Raila Akeyo had thought it up. She was a dedicated and unsmiling person, the pilot of the Saturnus, but we'd all come to admire her ingenuity. As it turned out, meeting as a group before the race served a dual purpose. It was a good reminder that we still had to work together to make Southport matter, despite what might happen during competition. And it gave the ship teams a chance to align mentally with each other, after all the chaos of getting ready.
The stone wall enclosing this side of the Park barely contained the branches and leaves that spilled out over the top. I could hear the gentle breeze from the ocean playing in the treetops. Jaya and Pach and the rest had let me know they were near the north gate, so I started walking along the crowded street towards it. I ran my hand idly along the rough stone as I walked. I wouldn't be the only one staying on Daltia during the race, instead of heading up to Roxi with my team pilot tomorrow morning. But the others who remained would be spectating at one of the big parties -- not holed up in a chilly room by themselves. I grinned. Couldn't even be mad. It was frightening to be depended on like this, but it was the type of fear that I liked.
The great blackened-silver northern gate of the park emerged from the greenery surrounding it. The mines of the outer asteroid belts lent the dark metal to all ornaments on this side of the Park. Now, in the final light of sunset, the wrought crest of Daltia at the tip of this gate caught the glow like a little moon. I walked beneath it. As always, I imagined it was instantly quieter here. Cut off somewhat from the world around it, the business, the rules.
And, well, it was.
No cars flew overhead. It was illegal. In here, all you had to hear, or see, was whatever you decided you wanted to.
I made my way deeper in. The north side was less familiar to me. Mostly I met friends at the western fountain, and Rai and I had spent our time near the southern gate, closest to the work-study residences. The southern region of the Park held the public amphitheatre, golden fountains everywhere, shorter trees, the deeper scents of flowers. I hadn’t been back on that side since what passed for a winter on our world, when the blossoms were closed to us and we’d had to remember the scent. I could barely hear my feet on the flagstones that ran through these woods. The thickets and vines climbed high as they could up the twining trunks, never quite reaching the flower-strewn crowns. Then, as abruptly as it appeared at the gate, the treeline stopped and opened into a broad lawn of pale grass.
People had set up countless groups and knots along the gentle slope of the hillside. Some reclined on blankets, looking up at the first stars. Others had formed circles to eat and talk. I spotted Eli standing not far from the inner wall, and the rest of the Southport pilots scattered on the grass around him.
"Hey, Jessyn," Pach waved at me upside-down from where he lay on a blanket. "Grab a drink if you want." He pointed at a cooling crate a short distance away. I waved at Jaya and a few others I knew, got a glass bottle, and sat down. As I was catching up on their conversation, a few more friends wandered into the group.
After awhile, Pach sat up, then went to sit on another overturned crate. The talking died down as people turned to look at him. "Alright, I think we're mostly all here. The Windfall is in the cooling chest. No pressure if you don't want any, but if you do, put it in your drink. We don't want your germs."
We passed the small vial and dropper around. I finished it off with the rest of the drink in my bottle, then threw that into a bag for the renewer. Eli patted a spot on a quilt he was sharing with Noa Savali, Pach's main mechanic for this particular race. We all laid back and stared up at the indigo sky. Vulnerability and familiarity swirled inside me, refusing to mix or reconcile. I could hear the others in my group talking quietly, out of the line of my sight. And past them, the scattering of laughter and voices, distant aircar engines, and below it all the steady night breeze.
In a sense, I couldn't grasp that this was where I was -- lying on a blanket, removing most of the privacy blocks on my inner tech, sensing the cool grass against my back -- as one by one I felt their Linear minds touch mine.
It was familiar. They were familiar. But it was fellowship brought to its acute ultimate.
The first chill outlined my skin, the edges of my thoughts.
Jasha was right, of course. No matter how much we shared, or what skill we developed in forming our ideas to cause in others what they'd originally created inside us, it was brutal, it was incomplete. But this was what we had.
Our heads close together, mind's eyes looking around.
Raila went first. We all climbed into the sky without moving, long past where the tech ran out. Far beyond the dreams of all the others in the Park, tangling and laughing in various clearings below. Where would we go? I felt myself smile, a long way back down below us.
We glided in a car I’d never seen before, taking shape from another person’s thoughts. She’d loved this one. I could tell, from the erotic clusters of details — the soft and shining controls, silver and white in the memory's audacious moonlight.
They all took turns. We saw the insides of unfamiliar engines, the chasing lights of Roxi's landing strip, and the sea to the south of our home port in every imaginable weather. Silently I called their faces into my mind as they shared. The beauty of Windfall, at least to me, was the alignment between who they were and what they offered us. Their faces became diaphanous masks, and the lives they lived shone through.
Jaya, a human spark, was the first to take us to orbit.
We went up and out into the stars. Pain in my heart, the ache that seemed to always outline who I was. I only held back a little, as other minds also contracted and reopened with silent emotion. This was the core of what called to us. The ports on Damor, on the islands, sprinkled through this entire system like a thin constellation, were defined and animated by this velvety blackness.
I let us flutter halfway down. Then I surprised her.
Every pilot's first dare, the high pass through the central mountain range. It was turbulent even in the clearest weather, and it was forbidden to approach it without City port clearance. Every trip through was thrilling. My memory augmented itself with the sharp focus of all the other pilots around me - we all held that throttle bar in tight and sweating hands, felt the daredevil grin on our faces.
As my memory took us farther and farther west, over the green and gold plains of the continent’s centre, the ship changed. I let it morph around us. I’d made this run so many times, in so many machines. Silver and narrow, or white and bulky. The circular bridge of that bronze one last year. The failures we’d fussed over. The perfect wonders that had sold too soon.
In some of these starships, I had been a passenger. In a few, I was very young.
The sharing became quieter. I could sense we were dissolving slowly out into our small team groups, here and there, near lanterns that someone had placed on the faraway grass. The tones of Eli's and Pach's minds grew closer. I settled into our laid-back Yanakoya tribe. The aeonic end of this drug spread out, a delta of small shared puzzles, jointly solved.
Too soon, I felt the moisture of the night air on my skin again. I sat up, hundreds of miles away from that last mental workroom. The dark had come fully down around us now, but it seemed comforting and close, full of the sound of humming insects. I drew back into myself. Something stirred in front of me, and it took time to resolve into the gentle motion of wind in trees. The shadow of Pach's arm moved briefly in front of the lantern. He was sitting up, and we grinned at one another.
"I'd wondered if you had one," he said.
It was on my lips to say, One of what? But in the air between us, I caught a glimpse of my own challenge -- the translucent grey mass of the drive, its wires branching off like metal veins.
I locked my mind by instinct.
I'd shared that? In the quiet intimacy of the team, I'd let them see! How deep had we gone? And here was the Test Pilot Coordinator of Southport, a wicked twinkle in his eyes. Not at all the angry scowl I'd feared at being discovered.
Still.
I glanced quickly over at Eli and Noa and the rest. They lounged on the blanket in various stages of wakefulness, still thinking through each others' small dilemmas. Noa twined a piece of grass between their fingers idly.
I could no more relax any longer than I could fly without wings. I stood unsteadily, and made my way to Pach's side.
He smiled up, one pilot to another, ready for my confession. I put my hand on his shoulder in passing.
"Win," I said. "Win -- and I'll tell you."