Earthbound by DM Arnold (read book .TXT) 📕

“She hasn't made an effort to be friendly with me,” he replied.

“She senses your hostility. She's an intelligent and sensitive girl, Nyk. If you made a half-hearted attempt to be friendly with her, I'm sure she'd reciprocate. She's really a very sweet person. Andra hasn't known many men in her life, and it would help her if you were just a little nice to her. I dare say Zander is not a good ambassador for your gender. Enough of Andra.” She eyed him. “It's a fine mess you've made of your career. You declined that Food Service job, and now you're crosswise with the ExoAgency. What are you planning on screwing up next?”

“I thought I'd spend some time at my old home. You remember the place -- Veska used to bring you there on his vacations.”

“What will you do there?”

“I'll use the time to clear my head and maybe finish my translation of Koichi's journal.”

“That's a fine idea. Maybe you can screw up a career at the museum. Or, if you'd like, I can find you a position to screw up in the sequencing labs.” She approached him. “I'm sorry, Nykkyo.” Her eyes began to fill. “I hate to see someone I once respected fall so low. Let's pick up the pieces together. I'm willing to forgive you for your infatuation with the Earth woman. I understand how it can happen. You're alone on a strange world. You meet someone and sparks fly. I can understand your attraction to her, too. She's quite... striking. Not pretty, exactly, but striking. But now you're here and she's there, and it's over. Let's try to patch things up.”

“I'd like it if you'd come to Sudal with me.”

“You know how I feel about Sudal... All right, if it'll help you, I'll come for a little while at least. I have some meetings tomorrow. We'll leave day after that. I'm getting dressed, now, and heading to the lab. I'll see you tonight. You won't get into any trouble between now and then, will you?”

“I don't see how.”

He watched her climb aboard her skimmer. The pilot traded a salute with him and the craft disappeared into the distance. Nyk activated a vidisplay and selected the comm uplink in Wisconsin. A dial tone sounded as he accessed the Earth telephone system. He punched in the number Suki gave him. It rang.

“Hello?”

“Suki, it's Nyk... Nick. I made it home in one piece. How are you?”

“Oh, Nick! I miss you so much already. I'll be fine. My dad came home, and he's been so gentle and tender with me. I think maybe this was the right thing.”

“What will you do?” he asked.

“I'm trying to get my life together. I'm trying to be strong, Nick -- for you. I'm going to call around and start networking with some of my old grad school contacts. There are more opportunities for someone with my credentials in a city like New York.”

“I'm pleased. I'm sure everything will work out.”

“I can't believe you're calling from... where you are.”

“We'll stay in touch. Suki, I'd like it if you'd find someone to love you. There must be a man or woman who'd care for you.”

“I've found someone to love, Nick, and I'm sure he loves me. Will we see each other again?”

“I hope so. I hope to return to Earth.”

“Then I'll wait for you.”

“No, Suki. I want you to find someone -- an Earth someone. Will you do that?”

“I don't know if I can. I know I'll never find anyone like you.”

“I'll always be your friend, Suki. I do love you, and I'll never stop loving you.”

“I know you do, Nick. I love you too.”

Nyk packed a case with belongings needed for the trip to Sudal. He rode the lift with Senta, summoned a tubecar and requested the train station.

He located the departure area and stood with her to wait for the Sudal Express. The train was capable of traveling at nearly the speed of sound. It could make the trip to Sudal, traveling down the eastern coast, in less than half a day.

The departure area was a large room with a row of sliding doors. A chime and an announcement indicated the train was ready for boarding. The doors slid open. Nyk and Senta each pressed their wrists against a scanpad as they entered the coach. Inside were two rows of seats. Senta sat by the window. Nyk could hear and feel the low vibration of equipment to run the train.

A double chime sounded and the coach doors slid shut. The train began to accelerate away from the station. Within the urban areas the trains ran through large, transparent tubes similar to the ones used by the tubecars. The coach was quite full, but Nyk knew from experience most of these passengers would empty out at the next stop, one of the larger residential areas on the outskirts of Floran City. Then the train ran as an express, stopping only at Tinam before terminating in Sudal.

The train ran at about a quarter of its top speed through the tube to the first stop, decelerated and came to a halt. A chime sounded, and the doors swished open. The coach emptied out leaving only Nyk, Senta and an elderly man as passengers. Senta leaned toward him. “See, no one wants to go to Sudal.”

A double chime sounded, the doors closed and the train began to accelerate again, this time to achieve its top speed. Nyk watched the cityscape turn into a blur.

The next station, where the express would not stop, was for the power plant and for a connecting monorail line running to the west and servicing the mining cities in the uplands. Off to the east, on the seacoast, Nyk could glimpse the domes and towers of the power generating plant, one of two on the planet.

The train abruptly slowed to Mach 0.3. The coaches' inertial sinks permitted them to stop on a dime, if the need arose, and the passengers would feel nothing. The train passed the power plant station, then accelerated and sped through the Floran countryside.

Most of Floran's population lived in the cities, so the intervening countryside was quite empty. Vast areas of the planet's virgin vegetation whizzed by. The train was now traveling at its top speed of Mach 0.75, about 500 miles per hour -- too fast to glimpse nearby detail. Nyk looked out toward the west at the extinct volcanic mons rising into the planet's stratosphere.

Nyk's planet was younger than Earth by a half billion years or more. In its evolutionary progress it was about the equivalent to Earth during the late Devonian era. Most of the planet's life existed in a sea covering nearly ninety percent of the planet's surface. Life on land was limited to plants and microbes. There were no higher order land animals at all.

He could see the uplands on the lower slope of the mons. They were covered with a dense forest of tall, fernlike plants. The leaves were shades of deep violet, almost black, to soak up the low-energy orange sunlight.

Closer still were the plains, dominated by a scrubby, horsetail-like plant growing about knee high. The vegetation was primitive and reproduced with spores, though some analogues of Earth gymnosperms were emerging.

Nyk's training taught him something about early life on Earth. He pondered what was to evolve on his homeworld during the upcoming half billion years or so. His people lived here five thousand Earth years -- an instant in geologic time. He wondered how they would influence the natural development of native life.

Senta began to drowse. She rolled away from Nyk and slept with her forehead against the window. Nyk stood and started down the aisle. He walked through the cars until he reached the lead coach and found an empty seat in the first row.

Nyk enjoyed a child-like pleasure sitting in the transparent nose cone of the train, looking down the maglev line as they sped southward. From this vantage, the train appeared to bore its way through the landscape at close to the speed of sound.

The train approached the station at Tinam -- a small town known as the gateway to the agridomes. Some of the smaller and older domes had been visible in the distance for a while. Here, the first of the modern domes were visible. They were deceptive, looking smaller and closer than they were. A vast array of these domes stretched southward, to the outskirts of Sudal.

Nyk could see the mouths of the guard tubes for the station. The train switched onto a side rail and lost speed. He watched as the coaches slowed and stopped adjacent to the boarding platform. A chime sounded to announce their arrival.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, turned and saw Senta. “I thought you'd be here,” she said.

“You were asleep. I know sitting here gives you vertigo.” A double chime announced the train's imminent departure.

The train began to accelerate, its inertial sinks absorbing the forces so the passengers felt nothing. In no time, it had resumed top speed.

Senta glanced forward, then looked down. “Please, let's return to our seats before I vomit.”

Nyk followed Senta through the coaches. He sat, looking forward at the empty rows. She leaned against him and began to drowse again. He brushed her hair from his face.

Finally, he heard a chime announcing the train was approaching the end of the line -- Sudal. Senta awoke, smoothed her hair, rubbed her eyes and yawned. Nyk stood and retrieved their cases from the luggage rack. The train slowed, entered the guard tube and came to a stop at the station. The doors swished open.

The first thing he noticed was the increased ambient temperature. Sudal was located at the southeast corner of his planet's continent, near the equator in the tropical zone. The vegetation here was different than in the north, but it retained most of the same characteristics. The temperature averaged ten to fifteen degrees Celsius warmer than in Floran City. Nyk's urban garb betrayed him as a visitor from the North.

Nyk summoned a groundcar for the drive to the Residence. He put their bags in the luggage compartment and climbed in. “Car, the Residence,” he commanded. The vehicle slid out of its parking stall and headed toward the east. The Residence lay about twenty kilometres outside the Sudal city limits.

“Do you know what I think we should do tonight?” he asked.

“I hope you're not thinking about making love under the stars.”

Nyk watched the landscape roll past. The groundcar turned onto a narrow access road that led past the Residence.

“I feel strange returning here,” he said. “I haven't been here since before we were married. Senta, I know it's too much to ask that you love this place like I do, but I so wish you could like it a bit.”

“You know how I feel about Sudal.”

The Residence was built for Nyk's father as a reward for overseeing a major expansion of agridome capacity. Although there was no private ownership of land or buildings among the Florans, Nyk owned the right to use the Residence. It passed to him upon the deaths of his parents, and would remain within the Kyhana family for as long as the line was perpetuated.

The structure was circular with a domed roof. Heavy steel shutters lined the house. These could be slammed down at a moment's notice as protection against the violent tropical storms that arose periodically in the area.

All the buildings in Sudal -- a city of about 100,000 -- had such shutters. Every so often the entire city would shut down and the residents would close the shutters to wait out a storm so violent as to be death to anyone foolish enough to venture outside.

The groundcar drew up to the house. The place was closed up -- the storm shutters were down. Nyk climbed from the groundcar and gave Senta a hand. He stood and regarded some native plants growing near the entrance. His mother had put them there as ornamentals. They had bamboo-like stalks and