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wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic
Moby-Dick, Chapter 93
Fuschia paced the floor of the cramped room, boots tip-tapping in counterpoint to the station's ambient drone and hum. "We're going to be late."
They had been waiting nearly an hour for station customs officials. Their ship, the Pick-Me-Up, was safely berthed and cleared, but the personal interview had yet to begin.
"We won't be late," Nadine replied. She sat at the thickly-glazed aperture that looked out over the station's gantries and decks, criss-crossing a foreshortened view of the city a kilometer below. The city lights were tangled in the drifting mists of the artificial atmosphere. Nadine spoke calmly, but the tension in her posture and jaw suggested she felt otherwise.
Fuschia halted just in front of Nadine. Hands on her hips, she said, "Darling. Dearheart. Precious treasure, we are going to be very late."
"All right," Nadine said, rising and nudging Fuschia aside so that she could reach the door. As she entered the passage, she sent a request to station ops that her customs interview be switched to corporate track.
"Tell them who you are," Fuschia whispered when she caught up with Nadine.
Nadine slipped her arm around Fuschia's waist. "That's right," she told the audio feed from station ops. "Zouroff-Commercial. Thank you."
She had her pride, to be sure, and while she insisted on her independence—gallivanting about with Fuschia, playing at space exploration, was only the most obvious example of such free-thinking—she was not above using her family connections to make life a littler easier.
The sister of Prince Zouroff, majority stakeholder in fourteen shipping concerns and three station holding companies, not to mention mining and other resource-discovery outfits, was all but waved through corporate customs.
From the plush corporate reception area, they descended via rattling sky-vator to the city. Fuschia grasped Nadine's hand tightly all the way. She was a hell of a pilot, reckless and brash as any from the outpost stations, but she did not enjoy natural gravity.
They took the uppermost boulevard to their meeting, preferring to face foot traffic to chancing it in a hired vehicle.
The boulevard, elevated above a derelict cryovolcanic vent and the tangled bundles of long-disused cables, afforded sweeping views of the city. Unfortunately, the city itself did little to deserve such attention. It was a distinctly unlovely place, jerry-rigged and ad-hoc, unplanned from the day centuries ago that the first probe had set down and tested the atmosphere. Old-fashioned settlement spires, now sunk into the unstable karst flats, competed with snapped-together blocks of warehouses and the strange, unsettling twists of alien housing.
The width of the boulevard facilitated a cacophony of advertising, both the hardlight variety and the newer, far more ephemeral (and therefore better-targeted) photoprotein. As Nadine and Fuschia hurried down the boulevard's central lane, the ads spun and glowed, streaking the plate of their breathers, chasing them down with promises of JUST! LIKE! NEW! AUGS 'N AMPS! No better price anywhere (and nearly painfree!) to make the starry vast your playground!
Such was the insatiable commercialization of the still-novel transition from computational navigation to flesh-soul interfaces.
Space was not a void, nor was it composed of single-point particles like grains of sand. It was, instead, a surging and rippling thickness of quivering, pulsing strings.
That these strings were in constant vibration was a fact that had been known for centuries. But it was not until what became known as the renaissance of flesh—that is, the widespread and prolonged inquiry into properties of the human body and soul, and their imbrications and gestalt—that the mere thought of reaching and interacting with the strings became possible.
Paradigm shifts render new possibilities tantalizing and make old ones absurd; so it was with the renaissance of flesh. A cognitive frame that had prized computation and calculable vectors never could have admitted the possibility of flesh interacting across such vast scales, but one that operated on analogy, partial metaphor, and intuition was welcome to make the attempt.
Traditional interstellar travel, the kind administered by Nadine's estranged family, would never fully disappear. These new approaches, musical and whimsical, were too unpredictable, too dependent on what, for lack of any better term, were the idiosyncrasies of individual souls. Powers like Zouroff were bent on bringing those idiosyncrasies to heel, just as their forebears had earlier mastered polymerase-fuelled and computationally-intense transport. For the time being, though, much to the irritation of corporate interests, the strange music strummed on the universe by new-style pilots remained unique to each pilot, in harmony with their own particular souls.
Through the glare of ads promising too much, too easily, Fuschia and Nadine found their destination, a mid-range lounge. When they were within 300 meters, a small calligraphic arrow sought them out and showed them the way. Delighted, Fuschia quickened her pace, dragging Nadine along by the hand, tossing over her shoulder, "Corrèze really does think of everything!"
They made an odd pair, Fuschia swathed in vibrant natural fabrics, her face glittering with equally colorful paints, Nadine in the older style of severe lines, monochromatic synth fabrics and black-ink facial tattoos.
Yet there they were, tipped against each other, arms around each other's waist in the foyer, removing their breathers and shaking out their hair, looking over the small tables and patchy crowd for their host.
Corrèze waved them over from a cubicle along the far wall.
The crowd knew very well who Corrèze was. Most were too polite to stare outright, but the great pilot's presence seemed to magnetize the room's attention.
They were acclaimed, across systems and stations, outposts and asteroid belts, as a maestro of the stars. One of the greatest, in fact, exquisitely sensitive to the heaving and rumblings of the celestial sea, its groans and whimpers, able to calm and excite it in different moments, toward different destinations.
Corrèze was hardly the first to fly this way. Credit for bridging the body-string divide remained in dispute, but the feat had been accomplished at least two decades before Corrèze's birth.
They were, however, among the very best such pilots. Where before the renaissance, interstellar flight had depended on masses of computation and strict vectorial regimens, it now could be achieved with little more than a melody and willingness to soar.
Corrèze did not seem to notice the crowd. They focused all their attention on grasping Nadine's, then Fuschia's, shoulders, kissing cheeks in welcome, urging them to sit and get comfortable. When a squat cyber-tea dispenser trundled up to the cubicle, Corrèze insisted on renting it for the hour and served them all steaming cups.
If Nadine and Fuschia embodied, in their personal styles, the distinction between old and new, the time before the renaissance of flesh and the sumptuousness since, Corrèze, midway between them in age, confounded any clear categorization. As in so many other things, Corrèze was neither old nor new: their face unpainted, untattooed, but striking nonetheless with full sensual lips and a strong jawline, a tumble of dark curls, broad shoulders within a soft, undyed jersey, and square, handsome hands.
"Let me see those hands," Fuschia said. Glancing briefly at Nadine, Corrèze rested their palms against Fuschia's upturned ones. "Marvelous. Just beautiful."
There were technological prostheses and augments that enabled just about anyone to make contact with the strings (though those advertised outside on the boulevard were outright scams). The flights that resulted were clumsy, however, more like the shouted ravings of a turfed drunk than the exquisite performances of pilot-artists like Corrèze. Those like Corrèze, those with the gift, sang with space, vibrated in concert with it, brought their ships to trembling peaks of performance.
Nadine shifted and fixed her posture while Corrèze smiled back at Fuschia.
"What must it be like, hmm?" Fuschia asked and slipped her hands away.
"What's that?" Corrèze asked, voice husky, as they looked up at Fuschia through thick, dark lashes.
"To be a living work of art," Fuschia replied, direct and unabashed.
"Fuschia—" Nadine started to say, her tone a familiar mixture of fondness and exasperation, but Fuschia twisted slightly, angling herself away from Nadine and toward Corrèze.
"Ignore her," Fuschia said.
"Now that, I could never do," Corrèze replied, addressing Nadine as they refilled each tea cup in turn. "How are you, my friend?"
Even Nadine, analytical and sardonic as she was, was far from immune to Corrèze's considerable charm. She lifted an eyebrow to offset the blush she felt and replied with a generic complaint about station bureaucracy.
They talked shop like that for some time, discussing which ports were closed due to quarantine versus those closed by explosion; the onerous new tariffs across two neighboring systems; rebellions and repressions.
In the midst of this unremarkable chit-chat, the kind of thing any group of independent spacers would engage in, Nadine said, "I remembered to bring you those curios you asked about back on the Félicité—" She affected a shy, embarrassed chuckle. "You probably don't even remember, but I do—"
"What's this?" Fuschia asked, making sure she sounded ignorant and curious.
They all played to the audience, or multiple audiences, they expected were monitoring this meeting. Corrèze rubbed their forehead lightly before smiling as if in recognition. "The souvenirs? Of course, of course! In fact, I'm surprised that you recall that conversation."
"I remember it very well," Nadine said and handed Corrèze a small gilt envelope, stuffed with protein-encoded data-shards. "These are songs, some stories, several tourist films..."
It was nearly four years ago now that Corrèze and Nadine spoke to each other at a Zouroff-Comm reception aboard her brother's ship Félicité. The occasion itself was forgettable, something to honor the opening of a new brine pump on Vaygach-6, or to mark the launch of a new fleet of deep-space probes, each powered by the fragment of a human soul and flung into the unknown.
They met at the Félicité's central column, its shining silver heroön. Inside the column, the ship's soul danced.
"A base container for something so beautiful," Corrèze had murmured, hand pressed against the column. The silver glow illuminated their face, drew out all the sorrow in the world and left it nakedly visible.
The renaissance of flesh not only brought together human touch and cosmic strings: it also translated the energy of a soul, caught in its body, to drive starships. A soul was far more than fuel; it was intelligence and feeling.
Nadine agreed with Corrèze, but found herself unable to speak. She was crying, too.
Now, years on, they continued to meet occasionally and trade information.
When Nadine handed them the envelope. Corrèze's joy was bright, washing over their face. "Oh, my darling! I could kiss you!"
"Go ahead," Fuschia said, recrossing her legs and leaning forward, chin in hand. "I'd love that."
Corrèze laughed, as if truly surprised by such innuendo.
"Ridiculous child," Nadine said fondly while Fuschia, smirking, shrugged.
Corrèze's preferences were a popular topic for speculation and gossip. If anything, they were probably a throwback to the early days of interstellar travel: a ship-lover, a nausophile. Wed to the stars, in thrall to the journey.
"Deplorable waste if so," Fuschia had been known to observe, both to Corrèze's face and behind their back. "Gorgeous soul like that deserves to be touched."
"Maybe I'm saving myself," Corrèze suggested now as they tapped the tip of their forefinger against each data-shard to absorb its contents.
Fuschia snorted at the very idea. "I've seen you at some wild parties, remember."
Corrèze tucked the envelope into their tunic and nodded. "True, true." With seemingly effortless grace, they plucked a trio of pipes, trailing long tubes, from the back of the tea-bot. "Would anyone like a smoke?"
"Amazing," Fuschia murmured, accepting her pipe and passing the other to Nadine.
Corrèze plugged the tubes into the bubbling apparatus. "Just a little sweetness."
They smoked in companionable silence for a short while.
"And your brother?" Corrèze asked, pouring another round of tea. "A close call with the union, eh?"
Nadine exhaled slowly, piquant steam spilling from her mouth. "Indeed."
Revelations about Zouroff-Commercial's research into soul fission had leaked last year. Predicated on the question that if one soul could power a ship, how many ships might be powered by pieces of a soul, the research investigated how many fragments could be produced before they were too small to accomplish anything useful. In the wake of the revelations, Zouroff-Commercial and Zouroff himself had been sued by the Helmsperson Union for offenses against sentient dignity. The case made much more progress through the tangle of corporate and civil courts than anyone had thought likely, only to be summarily dismissed and stricken from appellate processes by its lead prosecutor.
"He's as repulsive as ever," Fuschia put in. "Probably bought off the prosecutor, that's what I've heard. Meanwhile, six new corpses, shredded and flattened like the others, just turned up in Öfö."
Corrèze winced. "I don't suppose he'll ever stop the research?"
"'Cost of doing business,' ain't it?" Fuschia rolled her eyes as she quoted the firm's public statements.
"If he did stop," Nadine said quietly, "someone else won't."
"A deeply cynical reading of the situation," Corrèze said.
Inhaling, Nadine bit down on her pipe and lifted one shoulder in a reluctant shrug. So be it, the gesture said.
Nadine found her brother's use of captive souls abhorrent, and did not shy away from sharing her opinion. In public, Corrèze kept their own counsel on the matter, but that evening of their first meeting, when Nadine found them before the heroön, handsome face streaked with tears that reflected the pillar's silver light, she knew exactly what they were thinking.
This must stop, the two agreed wordlessly. This is an obscenity.
They spoke then, as they spoke now over tea and steaming pipes, of innocuous things, but their understanding was total. In the guise of flirting with someone younger and famous, Nadine passed to Corrèze all the data she had concerning her brother's companies and their activities.
Eventually, the ladies took their leave. Corrèze returned to the small suite they kept in the coop house at Marly, just outside of the urban core. Most spacers stayed aboard ship when they could, preferring to avoid surface gravity whenever possible, but Corrèze savored gravity, like atmosphere, like landscape, whenever possible. While Fuschia had been born and raised in the outer stations, and Nadine on the luxurious Varangian fleet, Corrèze was a kid from the rocks.
They loved to fly, but never for its own sake. Born-and-bred spacers would never descend from the void if they did not have to. They would float in their hermetically-sealed worlds forever if they could. Corrèze, however, flew to go somewhere. To travel, to soar, to change, but always for a reason.
That reason, formerly the heart of the Félicité, was now floating, empty and neglected, in the dark star field of Szarisla.
Corrèze knew how to steer an actual boat, hand on the rudder, wind on their face. They operated flivvers and maneuvered puddle-jumpers. When asked about their interstellar genius, they usually shrugged and replied self-deprecatingly, murmuring something about how they learned to sail through literal touch. In a way, they suggested, the shift from a yoal on the mountain creek to plucking the very strings of reality was entirely natural—in fact relatively unremarkable.
In the suite's small washroom, Corrèze settled into the seat of the tub. While it filled with hot mineralized water, they reviewed the first few data-shards that Nadine passed over. There had to be something there, if only they could find it: some way to retrieve the former heart of the Félicité, to bring it back to life, return it to the stars.
They refused to stop looking; they could never cease hoping.
They floated there in the tub, eyes closed, fingers flexing, full of longing, ready to close the distance.