And so that is what we did eighteen hours a day until the truck came to pick us up and take us to the airfield. Though a casual observer might have thought we were working only half the time, and playing video games otherwise. Three of the cells that adjoined the courtyard had been equipped with syndevs hooked to big wraparound speely screens. In the center of each was a chair with disembodied spacesuit arms rigged to it. We’d take turns sitting in that chair with our hands stuck into the arms, groping at the controls. Projected on the screens around us was a simulation of what we might see out of our face-masks when we were floating around in low orbit, complete with all manner of readouts and indicators that, we were promised, would be superimposed on the view by the suit’s built-in syndevs. The controls beneath our fingertips could be patched through to the thrusters on the monyafeeks so that, once we reached orbit, we’d be able to scoot around and accomplish certain tasks. Beneath the left hand was a little sphere that spun freely in a cradle; beneath the right, a mushroom-shaped stick that could be moved in four directions as well as pushed down or pulled up. The former controlled the suit’s rotation, which was pretty easy to manage. The latter controlled translation—moving across space, as opposed to spinning in place. That would be tricky. Things in orbit didn’t behave like what we were used to. Just to name one example: if I were pursuing another object in the same orbit, my natural instinct would be to fire a thruster that would kick me forward. But that would move me into a higher orbit, so the thing I was chasing would soon drop below me. Everything we knew down here was going to be wrong up there. Even for those of us who’d learned orbital mechanics at Orolo’s feet, the only way for us to really grasp it was by playing this game.
“It is deceptive,” was Jules’s observation. He and I were in one of those cells together. I’d become good, early, at playing the game, since I knew the underlying theorics, so helping others learn it had become my role. “The left hand seems to make a great effect.” He spun the little sphere. I closed my eyes and swallowed as the image on the screens—consisting of Arbre, and some other stuff in “orbit” around us—snapped around wildly. “However, in truth the six elements have not been changed in the slightest.” He was referring to the row of six numbers lined up across the bottom of the simulated display: the same six numbers I’d once taught Barb about in the Refectory kitchen.
“That’s right,” I said, “you can spin around all you want and it won’t change your orbital elements—which is all that really matters.” A six-way indicator in the lower right began to flicker, which told me that Jules was using his other hand—the dexter, as he called it—to play with the mushroom, which he called a joycetick. The six orbital elements began to fluctuate. One of them changed from green to yellow. “Aha,” I said, “you just screwed up your inclination. You’re out of plane now.”
“Very significant in the long run,” he said, “and yet deceptively I observe no great difference now.”
“Exactly. Let me run it forward, though, to show you what happens.” I had an instructor’s control panel, which I used to fast-forward the simulation, compressing the next half hour into about ten seconds. The other satellites drifted so far away from us that they were lost to sight. “Once you get so far away that you can’t see your friends—or can’t tell them apart from all of the decoys—”
“I am pairdoo,” he said flatly. “Can you make it run backward?”
“Of course.” I ran the simulation back to just after he had messed up his inclination.
“How can I fix it—like so, perhaps?” he muttered, and tried something with the joycetick. The inclination got a little worse, and the eccentricity jumped through yellow to red. “Maird,” he said, “I am fouled up now on two of the six.”
“Try the reverse of what you just did,” I suggested. He fired the opposite thruster, and the eccentricity improved, but semimajor axis got worse. “Quite a fine puzzle,” he said. “Why did I study linguistics instead of celestial mechanics? Linguistics got me into this excellent mess—only physics can get me out.”
“What’s it like up there?” I asked him. He was getting frustrated and I thought he might benefit from a break.
“Oh, you have seen the model, I am sure. It is quite accurate, in the externals which can be viewed by your telescopes. Of course, most of the Forty Thousand never see any of that. Only the internals of the Orbstack where they live their whole lives.” He was speaking of the living heart of the Daban Urnud: sixteen hollow spheres, each a bit less than a mile in diameter, clustered about a central axis that rotated to produce pseudogravity.
“That’s what I’m asking about,” I said. “What’s that community of ten thousand Laterrans like?”
“Split, now, between the Fulcrum and the Pedestal.” The Fulcrum was the opposition movement, led by Fthosians.
“But in normal times—”
“Until we came here, and the positions of Pedestal and Fulcrum became so hard, it was like a nice provincial town with perhaps a university or research lab. Each orb is half full of water. The water is covered with houseboats. On the roofs of them, we grow our own food—ah, I remember food!”
“Each race has four of the orbs, I assume?”
“Officially, yes, but there is of course some mixing of the communities. When the ship is not under acceleration, we can open certain doors to join neighboring orbs, and one moves freely between them. In one of the orbs of Laterre, we have a school.”
“So there are children?”
“Of course we have children and raise them very, very well—education is everything to us.”
“I wish we did a better job of that on Arbre,” I said. “Extramuros, that is.”
Jules thought about it, and shrugged. “Understand, I do not describe a utopia! We do not educate the young ones purely out of respect for noble ideals. We need them to stay alive, and to allow the voyaging of the Daban Urnud to continue. And there is competition between the children of Urnud, Tro, Laterre, and Fthos for the positions of power within the Command.”
“Does that even extend to fields such as linguistics?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. I am a strategic asset! To make its way to new cosmi and to carry out new Advents is the Rayzon Det of the Command. And almost nothing is more useful to them, in an Advent, than a linguist.”
“Of course,” I said. “So, your nice town of ten thousand is big enough for people to marry, or whatever you do—”
“We marry,” he confirmed. “Or at least, sufficient of us do, and have children, to maintain ten thousand.”
“How about you?” I asked. “Are you married?”
“I was,” he said.
So they had divorces too. “Any kids?”
“No. Not yet. Never, now.”
“We’ll get you back home,” I told him. “Maybe you’ll meet someone new up there.”
“Not like her,” he said. Then he got a wry look and shrugged. “When Lise and I were together, I always would have said such things. Sweet nothings. ‘Oh, there is no one like you, my love.’” He sniffled, and looked away. “Not insincerely, of course.”
“Of course not.”
“But the manner of her passing made so clear, so bright, the truth of it—that there truly was no one like her. And in a community of only ten thousand, cut off forever from its roots in the home cosmos—well—I know them all, Raz. All the women of my age. And I can tell you as a matter of fact that in the cosmos where you and I are standing, there is no one like my Lise.” Tears were running freely down his face now.
“I am terribly sorry,” I said. “I feel such a fool. I didn’t understand your wife was dead.”
“She is dead,” he confirmed. “I have, you know, seen the pictures of her body—her face—all over the Convox.”