Free Empire Dreams by Ian McDonald Page B

good, because it’s a man’s duty to reflect upon his past in his retirement, and you remind me of that duty. Apart from that, I like having you here to talk to.”
    Something Christian had said prompts a question:
    “Did you say you were waiting for your kite to tell you when a special ship came?”
    “I suppose I did, in so many words. Mind you, she’d hardly qualify as a ‘ship’ anymore, though she’ll be under sail and airtight: ‘hulk’ might be a truer description, but she’s nothing like those poor old rusting things out there in the sand, she’s a
true
ship, what you people call a ‘Sail Module.’ And she’ll come down like a true ship, in a blaze of fire and glory, because like all Sail Modules she’s too lightly built to survive entry into the atmosphere though she’s laughed at Cape Infinity.
    “Tell me, Fraser, have you ever seen meteors burn across the sky out of their proper season and wondered to yourself how they came to be there? You see, they might not be meteors at all, but the hulk of some SailShip burning away to nothing up there on the edge of the world. Despite our machines and our harnessing of foursight so that we can reach out over the lightspeed horizon and out of possible danger, travel between the worlds is still a perilous business. For although we created Cape Infinity, it is beyond our control and always will be, for in it we’ve finally made something which is our master.”
    And with that he will not say another word about ships or suns or black kites, but sits there gazing at the distant hulks with a look on his face that is a curious mixture of recognition and grief.
    Your stomach reminds you that you have spent all morning talking and you are eager to unwrap your lunch. As usual Christian has forgotten to bring any, so you offer him a share of your cockelty pie and pickled onions.
    “Oh, no, thank you, Fraser, I’m not all that hungry … I don’t seem to have the appetite I used to.”
    The fact is, he doesn’t seem to have an appetite at all because you have never seen him eat. And he mustn’t need as much sleep as he used to either, because some mornings you have seen him sitting there at one or two or even three o’clock, just sitting there as still and solid as that iron bollard beside you.
    “Christian, why do you tell me all these things?”
    Christian smiles. “Who can really say why we do one thing rather than another? But, enough talking, for the wind’s up and the sun’s bright and the day’s just perfect for flying a kite.”
    THE STORY OF THE PILOT AND HIS PUPIL.
    THIS IS A love story, and like all love stories there is more pain and cruelty in it than love.
    Now, there are two types of men who sail between the worlds. There are those who love to adventure in uncharted skies and feel the long wind in their sails, and there are those who love to specialize in one part of space until they know the weave of its fabric like they know their own skin. The Pilot was one of the latter. For more worldbound years than you would guess, Fraser, he had conned SailShips through the singularity until it was said that he knew Cape Infinity better than he knew his own doorstep. And there was many a word of truth in that, for he was the kind of man who lived two months out of twenty years in his little house on Water Street, who was only truly happy with a ship’s deck under his feet, and who had as many marks on his staff as a man of three times his subjective years. He remained changeless while the people he passed in the streets of the city grew older and they muttered to themselves that no one could cheat God and not reap the reward some day.
    Now, about this time the Admiralty commissioned a ship for a seeding run to the then-uninhabitable New South Georgia Colony. Never a popular business, this planetary seeding; you’d think that in return for a whole new world the Admiralty would be a little more generous with their bonuses than they are. The name of this