Read Online Starlady & Fast-Friend by George R. R. Martin - Free Book Online Page A

lap, and turned to the console. He hit some buttons.
    Outside, the stars began to flicker. The bright dot of the distant sun dimmed. The hulks of the Jungle, the Hades wheel, Changling Station; all darkened slightly. Only Melissa and the other fast-friends were unchanged.
    Caught within the globe.
    Robi smiled, and started to speak. Brand silenced her with a look. His signal lights called Melissa. When she acknowledged, he cut the safe-screens to let her through.
    He met her in the corridor after the airlock had cycled her in. Robi stayed up on the bridge.
    They stood ten feet apart. They did not touch or smile.
    “Brand,” Melissa said at last. She studied him with ice-blue eyes, from a cold and steady face, and her voice had a husky quality he had not remembered. “You… what are you doing? We are not… not darks. To be trapped.” Her speech stumbled and halted awkwardly.
    “Have you forgotten how to talk, Melissa?” Brand said. As he spoke, the bridge panel slid open behind him. The angel flew out and hovered.
    “Oh,” she said to Melissa. “You’re
pretty
.”
    The fast-friend’s eyes flicked to her quickly, then dismissed her and went back to Brand. “Some, I’ve forgotten. Ten years, Brand. With stars, the stars. Not…
I’m
not a human now. I’m elder now, an elder fast-friend. My… my call comes soon.” She paused. “Why have you screened us?”
    “A new kind of screen, Melissa,” Brand said, smiling. “Didn’t you notice? It’s
dark
. A refinement, just developed back on Earth. They’ve been doing a lot of screen research, and I’ve been following it. I had an idea, love, but the old screens were no good. This kind, well, it’s more sophisticated. And I’m the first one to realize the implications.”
    “Sophisticated. Implications.” The words sounded odd, foreign, alien on Melissa’s tongue. Her face looked lost.
    “We’re going to the stars together, Melissa.”
    “Brand,” she replied. For a moment her voice had an almost-human tremor. “Give it up, Brand. Give up… me. And stars. They… they’re old dreams, and they’ve gone sour on you. See? Can’t you see?”
    The angel was swooping up and down the corridor, coming closer to Melissa each time, clearly fascinated by the fast-friend, but afraid to come too close. They both ignored her.
    Brand was looking at Melissa, at the dim, far-off reflection of a girl who’d loved him once. He shook it away. She was just a fast-friend, and he’d get his stars from her.
    “You can take me to the stars, Melissa, and other men after me. It’s time you fast-friends shared your universe with us poor humans.”
    “A drive?” she asked.
    “You might…”
    But the angel interrupted him. “Oh, let me, Brand. Let me tell her. I know how. You told me. I remember. Let me talk to the fast-friend.” She’d stopped her wild circles, and was floating eager between them.
    Brand grinned. “All right. Tell her.”
    The angel spun in the air, smiling. Her wings beat quickly to underscore her words. “It’s like horses,” she told Melissa. “The darks are like horses, Brand said, and the fast-friends are like horses with riders. But he’s got the first chariot, and the fast-friends will pull him.” She giggled. “Brand showed me a picture of a chariot. And a horse too.”
    “A star chariot,” Brand said. “I like the image. Oh, it’s a cartoon analogy, of course, but the math is sound. You can transport matter. Enough of you, locked into a dark screen, can transport a ship this size.”
    Melissa floated, staring, shaking her head slowly back and forth. Her silver hair shimmered. “Stars,” she said softly. “Brand, the core… the songs. Freedom, Brand. Like we used to talk. Brand, they won’t… no running… they won’t let us
go
… can’t
chain
us.”
    “I have.”
    And the angel, emboldened by Melissa’s sudden stillness, flew up beside her. In a childish, tentative way, she reached out to touch, and found the phantom