STRINGS (part 3)

He brings her portpass, a clip that sends her identity to port when he puts it on her finger. Hierarchy stuff. Kit is scared-excited.

The get off the train at the top of the hill and look down at port. It sits in a huge saucer shape valley. The noise of shuttle landing makes Kit flatten her ears, she digs in her bag and puts on her hat.

No tap-tap-tap as they walk down to port. Even if she had worn her high heels no one could hear them over engine-roar. "So noisy," she says.

"They have earplugs to cancel the noise," Jon-Cat says. "Oh, wait a minute, not for your ears." He stops. "We can't go. It'll be too loud."

She stops. Not go? Noise bone-rumbles through her. "I can wear them," she says.

"They fit in ears," he says, gesturing like he was putting something in his. "They won't fit in yours."

"I don't care," she says.

"Kit," Jon-Cat says, exasperated. "It's really loud before you get inside."

She shrugs, walking.

He skips after her, grabs her arm. "Come on. It's just a dirty old port, there's really not much to see. The shuttles are the most interesting thing and you've already seen them. We can stand here and look. Then you can go back to town and I'll go to work."

She watches burn blackened shuttle land. Noise ground-travels and shakes her and booms hollow in her lungs. Is this enough? Will it break loose strings in her cells, uncoil them and recoil them in different ways?

No sense in fooling herself. She needs to try a click.

"We'll see if they fit," she says.

He is exasperated. "Okay," he says.

The gate opens for them--it knows her from portpass which is good for today. By the gate is gray box full of earplugs. Jon-Cat hands her two. She doesn't like things in her ears. She takes off her hat and feels her ears flattened against her head. She looks at the buttonplug in her hand. "Which side?" she asks.

"No up or down," he says, shouting over the noise. "Just put them in."

She fumbles in her ear, putting it in. Then the other. She doesn't have them right, the noise is the same. They feel funny. Jon-Cat puts his in and says something. She can see his mouth moving but can't hear over engine-roar.

He can tell. "If you can't wear them, we won't stay," he shouts.

Oh they irritate her. "We can go inside," she says.

"No," he says. "It gets too loud, it can hurt your hearing."

The buttons irritate her so she shakes her head, hard, dog-shake. One button shakes loose but one button falls into place.

It is strange; one ear is full of noise and one is empty. It's as if she has gone deaf in her left ear. She retrieves the other button from where it bounced against linkfence wall and shoves it in. It is awkward, pushing and prodding. Suddenly the noise is gone.

She winces and shakes her head, wishing buttons didn't feel so strange. "Okay," she says.

"Are they okay?" Jon-Cat asks.

She nods, and flicks her head involuntarily, a shake to dislodge them, but luckily they don't. "How do they work?" she asks. "I hear you, but not engine-roar."

"They match the frequencies of the engine noise and buffer them out, and they let other sounds in," Jon-Cat says, which is not much explanation.

Jon-Cat grins. "You look unhappy, Kit."

"They feel funny."

"You'll get used to them."

She is not convinced, but once they are inside she'll take them out.

The port surface is like glass, but blasted, blackened, scarred and scraped. She watches black shuttle take off, feels the rumble but doesn't hear any noise. Her mouth is open as she watches it climb, her teeth are shaking but there is not even a whisper of sound.

Jon-Cat laughs, she can hear him clearly. "Come on, Ears," he says.

They cross blasted shuttle-plain, in some places stressed into spiderweb cracks. Blackened shuttles climb to the sky and land. Kit stomps on shattered places and hears her feet thump. Jon-Cat shakes his head.

She is almost sad when they go downside to city under port, except that she wants to take out earbuttons. But Jon-Cat says, "Don't take them out, we'll need them to go out to the ship."

Port people everywhere, all standard, most, like Jon-Cat, brown-skinned, eyed and haired. She puts her hat on, feeling ostentatious. People glance at her and she feels sorry for them, all so plain. "Why don't people modify?" she whispers to Jon-Cat.

He shrugs. "People don't really want to."

The light is bright, making odd shadows under everyone's eyes and noses, sharp-edged shadows. They take a little cart and Jon-Cat drives them through corridors. The corridors are different colors--yellow, blue, gray, rust--and at first it is interesting, but it's all same-same except for the colors. She flicks her ears, wishing she could take out earbuttons, tedium-tired, yawning.

Back up some stairs to a door where they wait while the floor rumbles soundlessly, then the door opens on portfield, only now they are near a huge black stubby-winged shuttle. It is so big. She didn't know how big portfield was until standing here, smallfeeling still, in the charcoal-soft shadow of big shuttle-ship.

"The Febrin Dirac," Jon-Cat says with obvious pride. This is his ship.

She does not like it. She does not like scorched sides or hollow sound of her feet on trembling bridge. She does not like bright light just inside the entry, or huge steelbones scaffolding they walk or little open seat that whisks them towards the pointed front of the shuttle. They stop at front end and look back at vast, half-filled cargohold. The ship is full of shadows and strange sounds and trembles constantly through her feet, vibrates gently wherever her hands touch. Her hands come away dusty with gray dust, not like lavender desert dust. Alien dust. The entryway they used is a light that glows like bright-star.

She takes Jon Cat's hand and he smiles at her, proud. Then he takes her into rust colored quarters. Quarters are hardedged with bright lights like under the port. Their voices are blurred with echo off the hard walls.

"This is my crewchief, CC Cambri. This is Kistna-Kit."

"Jon-Cat's friend from Wheredau," the woman says. "Welcome aboard."

"This is woman she will have to convince? She shakes her head, searches for something to say, can think of nothing but, "It is so big!"

CC Cambri grins and nods. "Come on and see the rest of it."

There are Jon-Cat's crew mates; some she knows from club, some she doesn't, but all standard, all the same. They tell her what they do, meaningless wash of words as if earbuttons tuned out sense as well as sound. Jon-Cat is in charge of environment and assists navigation, but today they are all loading cargo. She has a chair and she watches them hook lines to great containers, then work machines that lift and carry and dangle square-edged containers as if they were empty.

She asks tentatively if she could help, but Jon-Cat smiles and tells her to just sit and watch. They call incomprehensible things to each other, chanting, "Stress 4. Stress 5. Stress 4. Stress 4. Stress 5, stress 6, stress 7--silt starb, silt it! Starb! Stress 7, stress 7, no, that's enough, it's falling. Stress 6. Okay. Pord. That's fine. Stress 5." Jon-Cat, his hands in waldos, watches intently, doing little things with his fingers.

She tries to look interested. It is frightening. And boring. She didn't know something could make her uncomfortable and bore her at the same time. She makes herself as inconspicuous as possible, feels sleepy with tension. CC Cambri checks every container, tapping it with a disc that hisses softly, "42 kay-bar, poincaries. Outbound: Alba Sitabkahayn." Then she marks it off on her clip monitor. She looks very tiny in vast shadow-hold.

Jon-Cat explains to Kit that they are to transfer all the material beyond the click to the Alba Sitabkahan, another cargo shuttle.

Kit waits to ask if she can go with them but the moment never comes. She wonders if she has sat through all this boring day for nothing. Finally it is late enough that they stop and the next shift takes over. Kit is worn and yawning, even though she didn't do anything. She's so grateful to leave that she is almost glad that she never got a chance to ask if she could fly.

"Do you want to join crew?" Jon-Cat teases.

Her ears answer faster than she can lie.