Rendezvous at high relative speeds. Long hours. Edgy incidents. Broke stuff galore. Adrenaline fatigue. They’d all worked on repairs and Band-Aid gear fixes, even Fraq. He was all abuzz with his flock—interstellar diplomacy, in rattling-fast exchanges. He was on weird comm with the wormhole itself, through the relay device his expedition had lodged in its “rimwalls,” whatever the hell those were. So… quite enough.

Rachel realized she had two goals here—one immediate, one a career swerve. First up: she needed an antidote. This fellow had the wrong kind of politics, but to let that dictate everything was as dumb as politics itself. And Claire plainly felt the same… her ship’s name was a joke, actually, about long, lonely voyages as an ore hauler.

Rachel had endured enough of shipping all over the inner solar system, Fraq in tow. And this guy was tall and muscular, and you didn’t have to talk about business if you played the guy right.

Still, her swerve needed to be done in the business part, right now. So she said, “The wormhole negotiations will take time, but let’s spell out stuff beyond ownership and commissions and such.”

He frowned. “Such?”

“I want what Claire’s going to get. Shared access to the wormhole.”

Claire shot Rachel a puzzled frown. “Why would you—”

“Because I want to go through it. Through what Fraq controls with that gadget he’s got, attached somehow to the Mouth frame material.”

The guy shifted back, flexing his shoulders as if to get a burden off them. “Go through…?”

“Plus, I want training. In what Claire managed to do—grapple with the wormhole, close-in maneuvers, the works.”

Claire nodded to herself, as if she had seen this coming. “I get that.”

Rachel smiled. “Touché. Okay, it’s a done deal.”

He beamed. “I’ll get my team to work—”

“Still, Mr. Whatsit, I’d say you need to work on your negotiating skills. Too brassy.” Not as brassy as I’ve got to be now. No more Li’l Miss Librarian, no.

He frowned, but then gave her a grudging grin.

Subtlety had never been her strong suit. “Shall we discuss them—over dinner?” That would take care of her immediate, so the next one had to be announced firm and sure, her career swerve. “I’m going to be a wormhole pilot, yes?”

PART 14 THE WORM TURNS

Time goes, you say? Ah no!

Alas, time stays, we go.

—HENRY DOBSON

1.

SEVEN YEARS LATER

She was about to get whirled into a puree, and all because of tricky accountants and, worse, bureaucrats. Plus, of course, Fraq.

“Give me infrared,” Rachel called.

Erma murmured brightly, I can give you full spectrum.

Rachel’s headset showed a sprawl of color that hurt the eyes.

“You keep trying to get me to look at the world that way, damn it!” Maybe I’m just a touch irritated, Rachel thought, under pressure. But software didn’t take offense, or so Rachel thought. “Uh, I’m just a narrow-bandwidth primate. One spectrum slice at a time. Please.”