The Ghost of Lady Stardust Written by Klaus Æ. Mogensen 2. prize on Baltastica 2003 Contact: klaudius@get2net.dk or http://hjem.get2net.dk/Klaudius/ (C) Klaus Æ. Mogensen 2003, no unauthorized use permitted A freighter had come through the portal from Seidenspace. The Circle's tugboats had caught and braked it and towed it to the space station's Hub. The ship's command module was connected to a hatch while robots began to empty the cargo modules. Miran floated in the air before the hatch to receive the ship's crew. Her black hair hung weightless as frozen smoke behind her brown face. She readied her wrist terminal while she waited. Then the hatch opened and one of the most extraordinary men she'd ever seen floated out. Everyone knew that Seidenspace travellers were strange. It was a result of the van Klass effect. Miran had seen quite a number of examples in the three weeks she had served her civic duty in the terminal - people with odd skin colours, pointed ears or too many fingers. Not to mentioned those that acted strangely. But this man took the price so far. He was well over two metres tall and massively built, but without the exaggerated, bulging muscles seen in bodybuilders. His skin was albino white, but his eyes and the little triangle of hair on top of his head were slate grey, a colour that was repeated in his loose clothing. He had no nose, just two narrow slits that dilated lightly when he breathed. His ears were small and lay flat to the sides of his head. He sent Miran a relaxed smile, white teeth behind white lips. She blinked once and got a grip on herself. "Welcome to Ngorongoro's Circle," she said as if she had said it hundreds of times before - which in fact she had. "I am here to guide you and answer whatever questions you may have. But first I have to ask you a few." The milky giant nodded and smiled. Miran couldn't interpret the expression in his eyes. "What is your name and that of your ship?" "Christian Aloe, owner and captain of the freigther Lady Stardust." His voice was deep and rumbling, like a big cat that somehow had learned to speak. Miran glanced at her terminal to make sure it had caught the words right. "How big is the crew?" "One. Me." He laughed briefly. He had an intense presence that was at once frightening and attractive. "And your cargo is?" "Specialties and news from several system. My last port of call was Station Triskele at Alrai." "Alrai?" Miran asked eagerly. "I'm from Alrai II. Do you have any news from there?" "I've brought news packages from Alrai and other systems. Official news." He smiled shyly, an unexpected expression on so fearsome a face. "If you want to hear more than that, you have to agree to eat dinner with me tonight. It's been a while since I've spoken to anyone but the ship's computer." Miran hesitated. She wasn't entirely comfortable with the thought of being alone with this gigantic spacefarer, but it had been some time since she had heard any news from home. And she couldn't deny that she was more than a little fascinated by him in spite of his exotic looks - or perhaps in part because of them. She met his eyes. "My watch is over in thirty minutes. If you can occupy yourself here in the Hub for that long, I can show you to your guest quarters. There's probably somewhere nearby where we can eat." Aloe scowled. "I have waited the better part of a month to feel solid ground under my feet." Then he smiled teasingly. "So I guess thirty minutes more or less won't make much of a difference." Miran's replacement showed up early, so little more than fifteen minutes had passed when they pulled themselves into an elevator that ran down Red Spoke to the Rim thirty kilometres below the Hub - or rather, out from it. The elevator was transparent on one side, giving them a good view of the Circle on the way down. At first the Rim was nothing more than a narrow, shining, featureless hoop, so Miran instead studied their reflections in the glass. Her own dark skin produced a faint mirror image through which she could see the stars outside. If she looked closely, she could make out a pair of eyes and a few white teeth floating over the reflection of her navy blue suit. Christian Aloe's reflection was a stark contrast to that. Even though she was no small woman, she barely reached his shoulders, and his white face towered ghostly above her own. They had by now come so close to the Rim that they could make out details of the biotope: lakes, forests, hills, sandy beaches, and a few small snow-capped mountains. They passed through the biotope's crystal shield and for a short while dropped through a cumulus cloud. Once free of it they were so close to the landscape that it required little effort to imagine they looked down on a planet, as least as long as they didn't look to the sides. Below them Red Spoke disappeared into fir-clad hills where glittering streams snaked down to a lake that took up most of the width of the Rim. "I often sail there," Miran said. "It reminds me of South Sea where I lived on Alrai II." They found a restaurant with human chefs on one of the upper levels of the Circle's rim. The wait for the food was long compared to the automatic cafeterias where Miran used to eat. They spent the time talking, mostly about Miran's home planet of Alrai II. "What made you leave Alrai?" Aloe asked. "You clearly love it so much." Miran looked out the window, down at Caph IV, which Ngorongoro's Circle orbited. "My big brother emigrated to this place to study the wind systems down there." She nodded towards the planet, which glided slowly by the window. Massive, torn cloud-spirals made it impossible to get more than a few glimpses of the ochreous surface. Lightning flashed in the depths of the clouds, powerful enough to be visible from orbit. "I arranged to spend a few semesters here as exchange student so I could visit him. That decision almost killed me." She turned to him again, met his grey eyes. "I got seriously ill shortly after we entered Seidenspace. The ship's doctor discovered that the van Klass effect was in the process of mutating my inner organs to ineffective shapes. The doctor used most of the ship's stores of drugs and blood plasm to keep me alive until we returned to normal space here at Ngorongoro's Circle. I recovered slowly and was strongly advised never to enter Seidenspace again. I have been stranded here since then, nearly three years now." Christain reached out and enfolded both of Miran's slender brown hand in one of his. "Do you miss Alrai II a lot?" Miran could feel the heat coming from his big, white hand. "I miss the sounds of the sea outside my window. I miss lying on the warm sand of the beach, looking up at the stars and the moons. I miss sailplaning in the mountains and listening to the song of the Jubjub birds. And I miss my family and childhood friends. T'chala - my brother - does what he can, and I manage. But at times it is hard. You who travel all the time, can you understand what it means to lose your home?" He didn't answer, mere lifted her hands to his mouth and gently kissed them. After eating they went up to the biotope and found an outdoor café in a forest clearing. The local time was evening, and they drank warm, spiced coffee as they continued talking, oddly at ease as if they had known each other for years. As it got cooler, she snuggled closer to his warm body. "Alistair Cohen's ship was named Lady Stardust," she said drowsily, "back when he made first contact with the Albireo last century. Is your ship named after that?" He nodded and kissed her ear. "I worked for StarCorps for some years before I could afford my own ship. The last ship I served on was in fact Cohen's old Lady Stardust, but by then he had long since retired. The ship was broken up shortly after I was paid up and left, and I thought it was fitting to let the name live on in my new ship. So you could say that Cohen's ghost still is travelling between the stars." Speaking about travelling between the stars made Miran sad. She changed the subject. "So, how long do you plan on staying here?" He looked thoughtfully into the darkening forest. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. "A day or two more. I can't stay longer than that." He turned his face towards hers. "But let's talk about something more pleasant. Such as you." He cradled her chin in one of his fingers and lifted her lips to meet his. She answered his kiss, lightly at first, then with increasing passion. Miran got the rest of her civic duty postponed so she could spend more time with Christian before he left. The next day they returned to the biotope again and borrowed a small sailboat at a large salt lake. Soon they sliced through the water far from shore. Mirrors in the crystal arch a kilometre and a half above their heads reflected sunlight onto the clear blue water, creating the illusion of daylight. To the port side the lake stretched almost all the way to the Rimside about two kilometres away, but on the starboard side it ended in serrated cliffs overgrown with tropical plants. Further back, round hills rose towards low-hanging clouds. Flocks of birds swarmed around the cliffs, and even at a couple of kilometres' distance they could hear their cries if they listened carefully. The only other sounds were the clucking of water against the boat's hull and the murmur of wind against sail and mast. "When I'm boating out here, I can close my eyes and almost believe I'm back home at South Sea," Miran said. "But the smell isn't quite right." Christian nodded. "Every planet has its own smell. An old captain I know of claims that if he was brought blindfolded to any known planet, he would know where he was the instant he walked into the open." He sat with his back to Miran, who was steering, and looked ahead where the lake curved up and gave way to a beach and then a forest that disappeared up under the crystal arch nine kilometres ahead. Behind them Blue Spoke rose through the crystal roof like a Tower of Babel built into the heavens. "Are you getting hungry?" Miran asked. "I know a great place to eat lunch." She set the course for a nearby island. It had almost vertical sides of jagged rock, and off its coast, weathered menhirs rose ten, twenty metres from the water. Christian held convulsively onto the sides of the boat as Miran with death-defying skill steered the boat between stone columns and serrated cliffs until they reached a small opening in the rock wall. Behind the opening lay a small, almost circular bay with a crescent-shaped beach tucked away at the bottom. The wind disappeared the moment they got into the lee of the bay, so Miran found a pair of oars and rowed the boat to shore. Christian jumped into knee-deep, warm water and pulled the boat onto the beach. Miran leapt onto the hot sand and ran barefooted across the beach and disappeared among the trees that fronted it. After the bright sunlight it was quite dark under the trees, but Miran was familiar with the path and didn't slow down before reaching a small, sunny pool with crystal-clear water. A stream of water fell into it from an overhanging rock. All sorts of fruit trees grew around the pool, and Miran took her blouse off and quickly filled it with oranges, bananas, mangos and cumquats. Then she climbed into a tree and waited. Shortly after, Christian came walking down the path. He stopped and looked around the clearing. An orange hit him on the top of the head, and he let out a soft oath, more of surprise than of pain. He blinked at the orange and then looked up. Miran smiled mischieviously back. "Dinner is served," she said and threw the rest of the fruit down at him. After they had eaten, they bathed together in the cool waters of the pool and then went to the beach to get dried by the sun's heat. They made love and added their own cries to those of the seabirds and then laid back in the sand, looking up into the sky as the solar mirrors one by one folded back to make room for the evening's darkness. Stars began to appear behind the crystal arch, gliding majestically past the horizon and reappearing every seven minutes when the Circle had made a full turn. Miran pointed out a bright, white star: "Alrai." "Is there anything I can bring you from Alrai, next time I come this way?" Christian asked. Miran bored her face into his broad shoulder. "Now you went and reminded me that you have to leave. One day more, and then you're gone. It's not fair, I just found you." He held her close for a long time. Then he lifted her head and kissed her. "Two days more. I'm going to stay an extra day. I really shouldn't, but..." He didn't finish the sentence. She hugged him with more strength than she thought he had. Her mouth greedily sought his, and their wrestling turned into love-making, more intense than before. Their limbs drew artful patterns in the sand. Afterwards they lay in each other's arms. It got a bit cold after their sweat cooled, but neither wanted to get up. In the darkness, Miran could only see her own body where it lay like black shadows against Christian's marble-white skin. "Umbrella trees," she said. "What?" Christian mumbled sleepily. "Umbrella trees. The next time you come by Alrai, please bring a couple of cuttings of umbrella trees. And an assortment of seeds so I can grow myself a corner of Alrai II somewhere here." He gently kissed her. "It's a deal." Much later, they sailed back to Blue Spoke and ate breakfast in a cafeteria built onto the side of the spoke, overlooking the lake from an altitude of two hundred metres. "Your skin looks a bit pinkish," Miran noticed. "Have you been sunburned?" Christian looked down his arm. "Don't worry about, I always react to sunlight like that. Don't get much of it in space." He turned to the window and pointed. "Is that the island we spent the night on?" Miran leaned forward and looked down his arm. The short hairs on his lower arm shone like silver in the sunlight. "No, it is that other one, a bit further out." She raised his arm a bit. "Ah, yes, I can seen the bay now." He let his arm fall and leaned forward to kiss her. They drank the rest of their tea and took an elevator down to the main thoroughfare on level four. They walked hand in hand, listening to musicians and looking at artistic or comical shows. They went away from the main street for a while to see a neoretro living-art exhibition that Miran had been recommended. There they heard about a display of Sani Suko's 'Landscapes from Twelve Planets' and took a train halway around the Rim to see it. There was a single painting from Alrai II, of a place called Riftrock. "Do you know the place?" Christian asked. Miran shook her head. "It says here that it is from Northland. I've never been there. I've have seen a lot of movies and pictures from there, but I've never heard about Riftrock. Alrai II is a large and living planet, I guess no-one can know all its nook and corners." She still looked a bit crestfallen, as if she was disappointed at herself for not knowing this part of her childhood planet. Christian laid an arm around her shoulder and gently pulled her on to the next painting. "Look at this, the ice cataracts of Pollux V. I went down to see them the last time I made port at the Twin Wheels. They are made of water from volcanic springs, freezing on the way down the mountain side. The largest cataract there is almost four hundred metres tall." Christian had to leave her for a few hours to exchange his cargo for something he could sell at Landskrona Station, which still used monetary payment. Miran could see fine wrinkles around his eyes when they met again. He also seemed a bit shrunk, as if he'd been on a strict diet. "You look tired. Was it tough?" "A bit. There are a lot of things to keep in mind. I don't just have to consider what they need at Landskrona, but also where I'm going after that and what they will need there." He looked down. "I've also made an appointment with the tugboats," he said softly. "I'm leaving tomorrow night. I can't put it off any more." Miran hugged him tightly. "Why can't you stay any longer? Does a day or two more really matter that much? Or don't you like me, after all?" He laid his big arms around her and whispered in her ear. "More than you know. More than you know..." She wasn't quite sure which of her questions he had answered. They had dinner in Christian's guest quarters. He cooked the main course himself, a strongly spiced dish he said was from China. He laughed when Miran asked where that planet was. After dinner they talked and got rather drunk on a bottle of genuine Scotch that Christian had brought from his ship. It had a fuller and somewhat sharper taste than the local stuff, and Miran wasn't sure she really liked it. But the idea that it came from the birthplace of the human race, forty-seven light years and many months' journey away, was as intoxicating as the drink itself. Miran woke in the night because her bladder cried to be emptied. She had little recollection of how she had come to bed, but vaguely remembered that Christain had drunk whisky from her navel. She sat up and held her head. The ceiling lit up in reaction to her movement. She squeezed her eyes together and asked it to dim, then stumbled to the bathroom. When she returned, she stood by the bed and looked at Christian. She wrinkled her forehead. She couldn't say exactly how, but in a way he looked more normal than when she first saw him two days before. Somehow, he also seemed familiar, like an old acquaintance you bump into on the street and can't quite remember. Perhaps I'm just getting used to him, she thought. She shook her head, immediately regretted it, and laid down again to sleep. "I have something to do," Miran said the next morning. "Can we meet again in a few hours?" They had just finished breakfast. Christian had been as loving as always, but Miran had been distracted. The man she had met in the Hub had looked to be about thirty, but the one sitting across from her now looked forty - at least. The wrinkles around his eyes were more pronounced that the day before, and his skin lacked its usual vital shine. His grey triangle of hair was fairer and less glossy, and when they had bathed, she had seen chest hairs she was fairly certain hadn't been there the day before. She was well aware that his unique looks were a result of the van Klass effect and that they naturally would turn more normal after a time in normal space. But a suspicion had grown in her mind, which she felt she had to invalidate. Or confirm. Christian nodded and finished his cup of tea. "I also have a few formalities left that need to be taken care of. What about meeting for lunch in the restaurant where we met the first night?" Miran walked around the table, hugged and kissed him goodbye, and then she left. They had lunch without speaking much and were having coffee when Miran asked the question. "How old are you, really?" Christian blinked in surprise and let his eyes fall before answering. "I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the year 2168. If we disregard minor relativistic effects, that makes me a hundred and ninety-six years old." He raised his head, locked his eyes onto hers. "I gather you've looked at the crew list for old Lady Stardust." She nodded. "No-one called Christain Aloe ever flew on Alistair Cohen's Lady Stardust - not even when allowing for variations in spelling. But Cohen himself remained captain until the ship was laid up, after which he left StarCorps, refusing to accept any pension. That's almost ninety years ago. I haven't found any record of Cohen's death. And you do look a bit like him, now, with a few obvious differences." She met his stare, defying him to call her liar. But he simply nodded. "Christian Aloe is an anagram of Alistair Cohen. When I left StarCorp I assumed a new identity. Too many myths were associated with the old one." "But your age. How...?" He looked out the window at the stars and answered in a toneless, calm voice. "You know yourself how the van Klass effect changes people that spend a lot of time in Seidenspace. That is why ships rarely travel more than fifteen or twenty lightyears at a time. For some the changes are insignificant, cosmetic; for most they are unhealthy. Although rarely as unhealthy as in your case." Miran laid a hand on her stomach, remembering indescribable pain, as Christain continued. "In my case it is the other way around. In Seidenspace I am young and strong. In normal space I quickly get old again. I have to keep travelling or I'll wither and die from old age, like in 'Lost Horizons'." The reference didn't mean anything to her. "Christian ... Alistair..." She looked down at the table, confused. "Say Christian. Alistair Cohen hasn't existed for many years." He laid his hand on top of hers. "I wish you could stay," she said. "I wish you could come with me," he replied. She raised her head and tried to smile. "But you probably have a girl at every spaceport." He laughed. "Far from every. And none like you." "I bet you say that to all of them." His face turned serious again. "It isn't like that. In fact, most look at me as a freak. That does put a hamper on my social life. To be accepted the way you have accepted me, without question..." He smiled briefly. "Well, almost without question. But still, it means a lot." He gently laid a hand on hers. "When I come by Ngorongoro's Circle again, do you want me to look you up?" She looked away. "I don't know. To wait six or eight months for you, and then you're here for three days before flying off again? It's a lot to ask of me." Her eyes turned back to his. "But I can't deny that the last few days have meant a lot to me - more than any other relationship since I came to the Circle. So I guess, yes, you can look me up." Christian leaned forward to kiss her, but she stopped his lips with a finger. "On one condition, though, or you can forget all about it." He looked worried until she smiled. "You'd better bring me some umbrella trees," she said. And then she kissed him.