Star Rigger's Way Page 21
Carlyle voiced agreement, but the truth was that he felt just a bit uncomfortable. He had grown used to the pilot-command position while flying with Cephean, and—Cephean, are you there? He heard an indistinct muttering, and the ship swayed slightly as though a tail had been switched. Cephean was there.
Gev, how does it feel to you? asked Janofer.
Fine. But he felt a certain sense of being out of place, out of time. He was being treated as quite an equal, though Skan retained the guiding role (which was fine, since Carlyle was not familiar with the route to Hainur Eight); but equality, he realized, was a new feeling to have in this crew. Before, he had been the apprentice, not quite fully qualified.
Skan? You?
Just fine, love. Gev, I think it would be best if you pulled in a little. Stormy weather ahead.
All right. Carlyle eased back from his long reach and rode pointing cautiously into the wind. He saw no stormy weather ahead, himself, but perhaps Skan could see farther. He bounced lightly up and down in the nose of the rig, wishing that this ship were Lady Brillig.
Where is the stormy weather? Janofer queried. I don't see anything but clear skies, a clear golden path.
Straight ahead, love. This valley breaks out soon, and things will change. I want us to be ready.
I see that things will change. But I don't see a storm.
It was unusual, Carlyle thought, for Janofer to be so direct with criticism. But then, he had never really seen the two in disagreement. Peering far ahead, all he could see was the valley breaking open near the horizon, and beyond that golden-red clouds like a sunset (although the sun was still high overhead). He assumed that Skan was aware of something they hadn't seen yet.
They sped toward the end of the valley. Janofer asked Skan what it was that he saw. She was becoming concerned, because she still did not see an agreeing image; and so was Carlyle.
Out there where the earth falls away, and you see a light sky over storm clouds, and a darker area that looks like labyrinths. We have to go through the storm clouds and down into the labyrinths.
There was silence for a few moments, except for the wind.
Skan, I don't see any of that, said Janofer worriedly.
Gev, how about you?
No, Skan. Sorry.
Sorry, my—
What I see is layered golden clouds over a fiery plain, said Janofer, ignoring Skan's outburst. You, Gev?
Carlyle focused hard. Not sure. I see the clouds, but the rest is fuzzy. Feels like I could go either way. Or maybe neither.
Wonderful, said Skan sarcastically.
Carlyle held his tongue, but he was upset. They could be in for problems ahead, and time was evaporating. They would reach the end of the valley soon; and he had never expected to find Janofer and Skan at odds this way. Had he been naive when he flew Lady Brillig, or had they purposely kept it from him? Or was it Legroeder's absence now, or the new ship? Or . . .
Get your image set, Gev. We don't have time to play, Skan ordered sharply.
Carlyle was startled by Skan's tone. The com-rigger had never been the gentlest of people, but in the past he had always been careful to keep his anger out of the net. I'm working, Skan. Peering ahead, Carlyle suddenly saw Janofer's golden clouds over an inflamed plain. He started to speak, to confirm Janofer's image. But through that vision, as though it were a transparency, he saw something else: storm clouds, angry clouds, and beneath them smoking canyons, branching.
Both Janofer's and Skan's visions glowed before him. He hesitated. A decision had to be made. Which seemed the more real? Which seemed to hold the course to Hainur Eight, to their destination?
It was so hard to tell. Listening to Cephean mutter and hum in the stern—and trying to read his thoughts, hidden as they were behind a private cynthian demeanor—he realized that in fact neither image seemed right to him, or real.
But that could not be . . .
Gev, speak up, said Skan. Janofer, we'll have to go with mine if Gev can't decide.
Guinevere flew on the wind, drawing closer to uncertainty.
Closer to danger.
Carlyle found himself dancing backward into the net—exploring, not the terrain ahead, but the terrain within the thoughts of his crewmates. The images were unclear—snatches, fragments, pinwheeling bits of mood, of illusion. He should not be doing this—using the net in flight as he would use the dreampool to explore the inner worlds of his friends—but he was doing it now instinctively, and he had to trust his instincts. It was quite possible that this ship was in trouble if there was conflict or, worse, if neither of the visions was true to a safe course to Hainur Eight.
Janofer's thoughts were the most accessible, and what he saw there gave him pause but not immediate worry. She was constructing images of her internal life, images of her relationships with others. She wanted to fly a glowing path through the clouds; she wanted desperately to fly it. Flickering in those golden clouds were love and friendship, and thoughts of Skan and Gev and dozens of other persons whose identities were a mystery. She wanted so badly to rig a course on that golden path because beneath it lay a plain of hellstone and the blaze of war. Beneath those clouds lay fear and failure—and the torn and smoking ruins of luckless ships and crews.
No wonder Janofer held the ship's bows high. But Skan was beginning to bear downward, hard, in the net. Gev, are you helping or dropping out?
Skan's tone jolted him around to the com-rigger's thoughts. Time slowed for him as he delved through his friends' hearts; he knew there were moments yet in which to reach his decision. But the blackness of Skan's words, the growling impatience, opened a window through which he could peer. And he did peer, and what he saw jerked his breath away. Dark, smoldering anger—and beneath it the labyrinthine canyons of Skan's personal depression, bottomless, swallowing light and vision, death-seeking. Skan's depression, which all of his friends had known on occasion and dealt with, was something he had always avoided loosing in the net. But now it was into the depression that Skan, consciously or not, wanted to carry them.
Skan, are you trying to kill us? he cried out without thinking.
Gev, damn you, what is that supposed to mean?
What do you see, Gev, where shall we steer? called Janofer.
Her urgency was well founded. The ship was leapfrogging ahead. Beneath them glowered flaming land and fearsome labyrinth; overhead floated golden clouds and flashing storm clouds. How could this have happened? Janofer aiming for impossible dreams, and Skan for a more devious suicide than Cephean had tried, so long ago, on crippled Sedora.
Carlyle did not speak; he acted. He projected, instinctively, an image of his own—and his thoughts were so powered by alarm and desperation that they overwhelmed the others completely. He drove forward an image that he knew: luminous amber space, the golden clouds Janofer had wanted broken to a peculiar twisted infinity. It was the luminous amber which he saw when he held a glass of ale to a light and stared through with unfocused eyes. Glazed luminous space with out-of-focus bubbles. At the bottom of the ale were darker regions, where the glowing amber was fuzzy and smoky and obscured by objects: shattered refuse, quarry debris, broken planets, the cluttered reefs of a massively depressed mind. Carlyle steered upward toward the light, toward the infinity; and he found himself being helped by at least one other rigger.
Gev, whispered Janofer, where are we steering? Do you know the way?
He did not, but he could not say so. His two friends were steering to disaster, and any other course was better. It hurt him to hear such fear in Janofer's voice, such uncertainty. Can you help Skan? he asked desperately. Do you know why he wants to do this? Even as he spoke, he flew determinedly upward away from the darkness. The ship moved as though in molasses, or true amber.
After a time he could find no reference points except the vague direction of the light source above, and disaster below.
No, Gev. I should have known, I should have known. Especially without Legroeder. Please—do you know where we ar
e going?
Janofer's fear made him tremble. These were people he had loved, people he had adored. How could this flight have gone so wrong? Was the ship even moving now?
Gev?
No. No, I don't. He was paralyzed by his own fear now; and the ship hung in amber space, suspended.
Caharleel! Sssssssssss! Caharleel!
Cephean! Yes! he cried.
There was a peculiar moment of transition, as Cephean slipped forward in the net, curling his claws out into space on both sides, grasping something, and as several other things happened. The amber viscosity dissolved around them, and the ship began sinking and rising in response to the net. A curious terrain appeared, slippery gleaming panes and corners sliding through the medium, like fantastically sized cubes of water ice slipping through a vaporous golden liquor. Light flashed and sparkled through the medium, reflected and refracted from a source which might now be anywhere.
Skan's influence in the net subsided almost to nothing, as though suppressed, and Janofer's shrank as though withdrawn. Cephean gathered himself and, with a whisper to Carlyle, leaped.
For a strange minute, the cynthian carried the ship almost singlehandedly. Then Carlyle resumed his efforts, but he allowed the cynthian to thrust the ship and to guide him. Guinevere slipped down between two narrowly separated planes and back up through a treacherous channel which angled and twisted past the corners of numerous drifting cubes. By the time they cleared that maze, they were flying again toward the light.
Cephean, do you know where we're going? To Hainur Eight?
Hyiss-yiss, hoff khorss!
How can you know that? Carlyle was astonished, but he felt totally secure with the cynthian's guidance. How did you learn the way?
Hyor fren-ss, Caharleel! Hi ssaw iss hin ss-their mindss h-when h-we lefft-ss!
(What? The cat?) Skan's voice was far away; he was watching from the innermost edge of the net. He sounded calmer now, and distantly interested.
(Seem to be doing very well together.) Janofer was withdrawn, with Skan, but was very interested in watching.
Cephean, I'm amazed, said Carlyle. Bending at the waist like a diving swimmer, Carlyle steered the speeding ship under several looming, unfocused bubbles. He wondered if they were going to surface in the head of a glass of ale. It felt right to him. It felt perfect, flying with Cephean. Can we carry it all the way?
Hoff khorss, Caharleel!
Carlyle nodded and banked, and the ship sliced upward through clear space and leveled out in a lighter realm. A frothy lane stretched out straight to the horizon, and at the end of it glowed their light source, a setting sun: Hainur.
An hour later, in the subjective time of the Flux, Carlyle and Cephean brought the ship upward through layers of foam and cream, and Guinevere popped to the surface, into a universe of stars and eternal night.
Gev. Cephean.
Yiss?
Carlyle was so surprised to hear Cephean respond so easily to Janofer that he forgot to answer himself. Janofer peered at them, causing them both to hesitate before leaving the rigger-net. Her eyes caught both of them at once, and by a silent appeal she coaxed Cephean to show his full countenance in the net. Cephean blinked, his eyes coppery and black. He regarded Janofer with an uncharacteristic degree of courtesy.
To Janofer, Carlyle said, You and Skan must have been tired from your journeys.
That's not the reason for what happened, and you know it, said Janofer. We would never have made it in if Cephean and you had not done such a beautiful job of flying.
Yiss, said Cephean. Caharleel h-ands hi heff ffly h-many t-thimes.
So we have, Carlyle said. He felt warm and nervous. For a long time he had been resisting the suggestion that Janofer was making to him right now. But perhaps it was time to stop resisting. Janofer was right. The real team here wasn't Gev and Janofer and Skan, and it never had been. His real teammate had been there all along. I guess we're not finished, are we, Cephean?
H-no. Ffly h-more, hissed the cynthian. His ghostly image vanished from the net. Carlyle met Janofer's gaze and allowed her an embarrassed smile. Then, together, they left the net to join Cephean and Skan on the ship's bridge.
Epilogue: Rigger's Way
Carlyle rested a hand on the back of the cynthian's furry neck. Cephean craned his eyes back as though to look at Carlyle's hand; but he said nothing and remained crouched, looking with Carlyle across the field of the Jarvis spaceport. Spillix stood ready for flight, with an empty pad on one side of her and a fat freighter on the other. She seemed a mere slip of a vessel compared to most of the commercial ships on the field.
"A good ship, Cephean. I think we ought to stick with her as long as they let us command her. That could be quite a long while." Carlyle picked his teeth and thought about it, then nodded to affirm his own words.
"Hyiss," said Cephean. He dipped his head and gently nibbled at one of the riffmar. They were arrayed in a cluster before him, with several of the smallest leaning into his forepaws. "Yiss."
They were alone now. The return to Chaening's World had gone smoothly. Janofer had ridden with them, to watch and keep company; but Skan had said good-bye on Hainur Eight and was now on a ship bound for the southern reaches of human space, with a Thangol and another human as crewmates. Janofer would be leaving soon on a ship out of Chaening's World. She said that she would try to keep in touch; and Carlyle believed her, within reason. Keeping in touch was no easy thing to do.
For just the two of them, then, Spillix was the ideal ship after all.
"Good," Carlyle muttered, thinking of all things taken together. He patted Cephean's shoulder and put his hand in his pocket. Before they left, he should call Alyaca again, to say good-bye. "Do you think you'll want to look for your home world one of these days, Cephean?" he asked.
The cynthian did not reply immediately, but his breath escaped with a tiny whistling sound. "Fferhaffs," he said finally. "Fferhaffs, Caharleel." (Longing and confusion and wistfulness welled up out of the quiet of his mind.)
"Maybe we will, then," said Carlyle. He raised his eyes from the silver ships on the field to the evening stars, sprinkled against the darkening sky. There was the source of dreams, and he could look at them forever. But he lowered his eyes again and watched the ships. They were the source of dreams, too—and reality.
"Maybe we will at that, Cephean. Maybe we will."
About the Author
Jeffrey A. Carver was a Nebula Award finalist for his novel Eternity's End; he also authored Battlestar Galactica, a novelization of the critically acclaimed television miniseries. His novels combine thought-provoking characters with engaging storytelling and range from the adventures of the Star Rigger universe (Star Rigger's Way, Dragons in the Stars, and others) to the character-driven hard SF of The Chaos Chronicles. Sunborn, published in 2008, is the fourth novel in the Chaos series, which began with Neptune Crossing and continued with Strange Attractors and The Infinite Sea.
A native of Huron, Ohio, Carver lives with his family in the Boston area. He has taught writing in a variety of settings, from educational television to conferences for young writers. He has created a free web site for aspiring authors of all ages at http://www.writesf.com. Learn more about the author and his work at http://www.starrigger.net.
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Star Rigger's Way
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Star-Freighter Sedora
Chapter 2: The Riggers
Chapter 3: In the Dreampool
Chapter 4: Hurricane Flume
Chapter 5: Garsoom's Haven
Chapter 6: Chaening's World
Chapter 7: Lake Taraine
Chapter 8: Alyaca
Chapter 9: Beginning the Search
Chapter 10: Golen Space
Chapter 11: Raiders and Glassfish
Chapter 12: Contact Is Made
Chapter 13: A Reunion on Chaening's World<
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Epilogue: Rigger's Way
About the Author