Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

would not have placed Kerthin among them. It made him feel responsible and protective.
    “There’s every provision for human beings,” he soothed her. “Special safety couches. Everything. Even the amenities, like the little lounge in the terminal. They take good care of us.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I looked into it. They even spend extra fuel to boost at low g for us.”
    “I’d still like to have a drink first,” she grumbled.
    “There’ll be plenty to drink up there. Half the crowd’ll have to be poured back into the ferry, I’ll bet.” He smiled reassuringly. “And by the way, it’s not true that the Nar don’t care about dying. They care as much as we do. Until the end, when they’re through with life.”
    A spread Nar with one of its arms in a computer sleeve stood in their path.
    “May this one know your names, brother persons,” it said in fair Chin-pin-yin except for the gender confusion.
    Bram told it, and it waved them on after presumably checking them off through its portable relay. There were no seat tokens—not even the simple plastic counters sometimes used to keep high-density systems like the bubble cars flowing smoothly during rush hours. The Nar did everything on the honor system.
    “Is that all there is to it?” Kerthin exclaimed. “Anybody could have taken our places.”
    “Who’d do a thing like that?” Bram asked.
    “How do I know?” she said peevishly. She turned half away. “Somebody who wanted a free trip into orbit so they could get a close-up look at a tree.”
    Bram laughed. “I don’t think that anybody who wanted to crash the farewell party would have to go to lengths like that. I don’t imagine the guest list was checked too carefully. The only reason they took our names here was to give the flight crew a little advance notice that our seats would be occupied on this lift.”
    As if to punctuate his words, a great shuddering roar filled the air as some ferry farther down the line took off.
    Bram looked up and saw a column of yellow fire paint itself across the clear violet sky. He couldn’t see the craft itself, only its blinding tail.
    “There goes the first section,” he yelled against the deafening rumble in the sky. “We’re probably next.”
    Kerthin clutched at his arm. Her face had gone pale.
    “Easy,” he said. “You don’t have to take this ride if you don’t want to. We can still turn back.”
    “No.” she said. “I’m going.”
    She released his arm. Her lips were compressed with determination. She gave him a forced smile and moved quickly ahead of him toward the waiting jitney. It was an electric vehicle, not one of the big living walkers the Nar usually used for short and intermediate distances. Bram wondered if that was in deference to human sensibilities— a lot of people were made nervous by tons of living flesh that they unreasonably imagined might get out of control—or if mechanical systems were the norm here in this place where enormous energies were dispensed as a matter of course.
    He got his answer when they boarded. Except for the three or four Nar sprawled out on splayed bases in the cleared center of the vehicle, all of the passengers were human, sitting around the perimeter on molded benches that had been temporarily glued to the floor alongside what had been the usual pedestal mounts. Thirty or forty people were already in place, dressed in festive multicolored clothes. A couple of preliminary parties were in progress among people who had brought jugs along, and a number of people had used their baggage allowances to take what looked like a variety of housewarming gifts scattered at their feet.
    “Hi, over here!”
    Bram waved back at the pair who had spotted him and pushed his way through with Kerthin to the empty seats.
    “Kerthin, this is Trist and Nen,” Bram said. He didn’t know them very well; Trist had been one of the fellows at the bachelor lodge when he had been staying there, and he had met Nen several times when she had been Trist’s guest at one of the Tenday breakfasts or evening shindy s.
    “I know,” Kerthin said shortly.
    “Kerthin and I were in the same division at middle school,” Nen explained with a quick smile. She was a trim, rangy girl, not quite as tall as Kerthin, with pleasant, freckle-dusted features. “I haven’t seen you for pentayears. Are you still keeping up with your sculpture?”
    “I don’t have time for that anymore.”
    “I was going to be the world’s