So, Garsina spent several days stewing her way through the ship, and ignoring the several messages which came across to her personal mailbox through the ship’s intranet. Messages delivered from Wyodreth Antagean’s personal account, and appearing for all intents and purposes to be olive branches extended in good faith.
No, Garsina thought. I know enough about this game—from what my mother taught me—to realize that you don’t take the first offer. Nor the second. Nor the third. Let him sweat over his mistake! Become unsure of himself, enough so that when next we’re face to face, he will be so abashed—
The Lady Oswight was unable to finish her thought. Elvin Axabrast appeared, and seemed anxious to get her attention.
“What?” she asked, busily reorganizing a spacer’s steamer trunk—which had already been organized three times before. The various items in the trunk would have gone floating throughout the room, save for the fact that the trunk’s lid was lined with grip surface. So, anything which had to be removed from the netted subcompartments inside could be temporarily held in place, while she went digging still deeper into the trunk’s contents.
“Ma’am,” the majordomo said, “I think you might enjoy it a great deal if you’re in the command module when they activate the Key. I don’t think you’ve ever seen such a thing up close, have you?”
“No,” Garsina admitted, and slapped the steamer trunk lid closed with a thunk, then allowed herself to be led away. Would Wyodreth be in the command module? Even though she was certain in her soul that it was he who had been in the wrong, she wasn’t sure yet how she wanted to use that fact to her advantage. She might have been the youngest Oswight heir, but she was not an idiot. Having the upper hand in her dealings with Antagean was going to be very important during the days ahead. She needed to be sure that the man grasped exactly where he stood, and that it was not on equal footing with Garsina Oswight.
After hustling through several corridors, and a lengthy lift ride down the backbone of the vessel, Garsina found herself being propelled into the civilian starliner’s command module. She’d toured many military vessels and seen their command modules before, so the command module of the Antagean liner was something of a surprise. There were far fewer workstations present, and while the station for the Key seemed to be where one might expect it, the arrangement for the ship’s captain was quite different. He didn’t occupy a position of prominence. Merely sat in an ordinary seat among several, with flatscreen displays and a small holograph machine no different from any other.
Captain Loper rose to attention, his spacer’s boots gripping him properly in place. Everyone else in the command module rose too, until Garsina forced a smile to her face, and bade them all relax.
“Would it be a problem if I observed during the crossing?” Garsina asked.
“No, ma’am,” Captain Loper replied. “We’d be honored to have a distinguished spectator for this, surely the most historic Slipway crossing since the very first performed in the Waywork. Ma’am, if I can direct your attention to our trusty Slipway pilot, who’s got his hands on the Key at this very moment, we can watch him do his thing. I only ask that you save your questions until after he’s through. This takes a bit of concentration.”
Garsina knew the technical details. The Waypoint pilot did not control the Key like an ordinary pilot. It was mental work all the way, accessing the Key’s functions through a seemingly telepathic interface which human scientists still didn’t understand. They only knew that it worked. And that not everyone was suited—innately—for the vocation. Garsina herself had always been curious to find out if she had the aptitude, but like so many things in life, her father had considered it beneath her station. So she had been content to study the Keys as an academic. A discipline for which there was abundant speculation and theory, but precious little hard data. The Waymakers had left so little of themselves behind for humanity to study. And what they had left, didn’t tell Garsina—or anyone else—much.
The civilian pilot’s forehead was damp with perspiration, and his eyes were closed. His hands moved across the Key in an almost intimate fashion. And his lips moved ever so slightly, as if to make words without sound. Garsina held herself steady near the Waypoint pilot’s gee chair, with Elvin peering over one shoulder, and Captain Loper peering over the other. Neither man said a word. They all just waited silently for the Waypoint pilot to make the next move.
“Sir,” the Waypoint pilot finally said, “we’re now in an optimal position within the Waypoint envelope.”
“How about the other ships?” Loper asked, this time directing his question to one of the Antagean Starlines personnel who stared into a traffic-control hologram.
“Everyone’s lined up and awaiting the order to execute,” the young woman said.
“Signal our readiness to the other two Antagean liners. Then give our status to the Catapult. We’ll wait for their order.”
The crossing would be almost simultaneous. As soon as the Waypoint pilot received clearance to proceed, he would activate the Key. What that looked like, precisely, in the pilot’s mind, was unclear. Most Waypoint pilots described it like a waking dream, wherein the dream’s contents were directly touchable through force of will. The web of the Waywork would be stretched before them, all of the many Waypoints connected to their closest neighbors by a skein of pathways. Traveling great distances required using several Waypoints in succession. But there was never any danger of congestion on the Slipway proper, because the moment the Key was activated, the starship in question instantly ceased to exist at one Waypoint, and came into existence again at the far Waypoint.
Garsina knew the theoretical physics behind the maneuver. Every particle of ordinary matter on the ship, in the ship, and attached to the ship, would be translated across an Overspace which could not be accessed with ordinary human technology. In the Overspace, ordinary time did not exist, nor did ordinary distance. The ship—and everyone aboard—would experience an immeasurably small moment of what could only be called singularity within the Overspace, and then would promptly pop back out into normal space at the target Waypoint. With no conventional time having elapsed.
If the pilot removed his hands from the Key at the instant of activation, or there was a power failure of some sort, the ship merely remained in place. No movement would occur. Experiments had been performed countless times, testing to see whether or not having multiple people touching the Key at once, or providing the key with an excess of power from ships’ reactors, made any difference in a Key’s performance. It apparently didn’t matter how much power you dumped into the operation. Any given Key could only jump one Slipway per execution, and whoever touched the Key first had command of the device. No other mind could access a Key at any one time. Therefore there was no daisy-chaining possible. You activated the Key, found yourself on the other side, and had to begin the attune to the Waywork all over again—at the Waypoint pilot’s mental level—for the next crossing. Which would take minutes, at best.
Meanwhile, the ship’s human-built computer would be loudly broadcasting encrypted FRIENDLY codes on known Starstate Constellar identification frequencies, to avoid being mistaken for a hostile vessel. Ships failing to properly identify, or identifying with outdated codes, risked being fired upon with extreme prejudice. Because every Waypoint in the Waywork was defended by a security flotilla similar to that of Commodore Iakar’s.
So, ensuring that all starships were constantly updated with the correct code scheme was vital to ensuring ordinary civilian and military traffic proceeded without incident.
Which did not concern Garsina nearly as much as the fact that nobody really understood how or why the Keys could access Overspace in the first place. There were no conventional instruments capable of plumbing Overspace’s dimensions. And no one outside of the Key-adept had direct access to a Key’s functionality—with a price. The Keys had not been built to interface with human minds. Sooner or later, all of the Key-adept were forced to retire. Often while st
ill quite young, lest constant mental contact with the Keys drive the Key-adept insane.
Or was it the Overspace itself which drove men and women mad?
Garsina once visited a DSOD veterans hospital where several Waypoint pilots had been committed. They had each been sad souls, drifting in and out of coherency. Most of them claimed to still be able to reach the Waywork, even without the Keys. And that it was the Waywork gradually pulling them across—their minds, one bit at a time—without conscious effort which made them crazy.
Eventually, they all dropped into comas, and died within weeks.
Every starship in the Waywork therefore carried medical personnel specifically tasked with caring for the Waypoint pilots. Ensuring that they all got plenty of rest. Painstakingly logging each and every hour of work. There wasn’t a hard limit on how much exposure the human mind could stand—to Key work—before going unstable. But a general range had been identified. And anyone hitting the lower end of that range was promptly taken off the job, and never returned to Key work again. Which did not eliminate unstability, especially among prior service military personnel. But it did cut down on the total number of Key-adept being forcibly institutionalized.
Some former Waypoint pilots—the ones who quit in time—retired from space duty altogether. Others went on to other space work, just not involving Keys. A few matriculated to academics, which is where Garsina had spent her time immersed in Waymaker lore. The other students, and a tiny handful of instructors, who had been Key-adept had seemed normal enough to her. Though a few of them had confided that doing work with the Keys had permanently changed their sleep patterns. It was not uncommon for veteran Waypoint pilots to suffer from insomnia, which itself had to be remedied through a variety of different medicines and techniques.
Virtually all of the former Key users whom Garsina knew through the academic world were proficient meditators. Men and women who’d forced themselves to achieve monk-like levels of mental discipline. Simply out of self-preservation.
Garsina almost felt sorry for the Antagean Starlines employee seated before the Key, whose face was even younger than her own, but who seemed to carry an invisible burden while his hands kept sliding over the Key’s smooth surface.
“Clearance to cross, affirmative,” said the command module crewperson watching the traffic hologram.
“Go,” Captain Loper said.
Garsina watched, breath held, as the Waypoint pilot’s lips thinned into a tight line. His hands froze for a moment, and then the Key’s surface illuminated…and it was an experience difficult to describe. Like the whole world becoming a negative image of itself, just for the smallest fraction of a second. Before suddenly everything was back to normal again. Not a hair out of place.
Except the Waypoint pilot’s whole face had gone damp, and he practically panted for air.
“Something wrong?” Captain Loper said, gently pushing past Garsina’s shoulder to rest a hand on the young Waypoint pilot’s arm.
“Nossir,” the Waypoint pilot said, his breathing gradually coming back to normal. “That was weird. It was like having to run wind sprints, except sitting perfectly still. The crossing doesn’t normally take that much effort. I don’t know why it did this time.”
“Log it with the surgeon,” Loper ordered. “Meanwhile, navigator, get busy making sure we ended up where we thought we should end up.”
Garsina turned to look at Elvin Axabrast, who’d observed the whole affair, and the old man merely gave her a shrug. He was a prior soldier, not Key-adept, and while spaceships were a pet fascination for him, the Keys were a mystery forever beyond his reach, so he didn’t have the same kind of interest in them that Garsina did.
A pair of new faces appeared behind Elvin’s.
Wyodreth Antagean. And Zoam Kalbi.
“Everything go okay? Sorry I missed it,” Antagean said to Loper.
“Seems fine so far. How about it, Darl? We wind up where we’re supposed to be?”
The traffic control crewperson was rapidly typing keys on her keyboard.
“The starfinder is still sorting itself out…wait, got it. Yes, we appear to be where we ought to be. We’re drifting just inside the new Waypoint’s operational envelope.”
The lighting in the command module suddenly went orange, and a computerized bong-bong-bong-bong began to sound.
Zoam Kalbi—equipped with a video and audio recorder—swiveled his head around and asked, “What’s that? Was the ship somehow damaged?”
“Nossir,” the young Antagean employee working traffic control replied. “The computers are simply telling us that no encrypted traffic pattern channels are live in this system. It thinks we’re at risk of being mistaken for hostile by this system’s security fleet.”
“Do you see any such thing?” Wyodreth ordered, before Loper could even open his mouth. “Now that we’re across, we have to know if there is anyone waiting for us.”
The hologram over the young woman’s workstation, quickly populated with small visual signatures—all of them glowing happily blue.
“Nothing but the rest of the Task Group,” she said, and exhaled with relief.
“Signal the Catapult that our status is nominal,” Captain Loper ordered. “And check with our other two ships, to see if their Waypoint pilots had the same experience as our own.”
“Fascinating,” Zoam Kalbi said, moving with care as the pair of glasses he wore merely served as the eyes for his recording equipment, tucked discreetly into his beltline.
Garsina took a moment to look at Wyodreth Antagean, who’d quickly pulled himself over to one of the empty command module workstations, and plugged in a slim headset. His fingers were a blur, moving across his station’s keyboard, and he didn’t look up as she continued to watch him.
The orange light returned to normal white, and the aural alert ceased.
“There,” Wyodreth said. “My override appears to have worked. Though the computer is very confused by the fact that there’s no traffic control to talk to on this side of the Slipway. I’ve ordered computers on all three of our ships to slave to the Catapult for the duration. That’s our authority until we cross back to Oswight territory.”
Now Wyodreth’s eyes did come up, and he looked Garsina square in the face for the first time. Their unflinching gaze was mutual—for a moment which seemed just a bit longer than necessary—then Wyodreth dropped his eyes back to his displays, and returned to typing.
Chapter 14
Kosmarch Golsubril Vex swept into the command module of the Alliance as if she, and not General Ekk, were in charge. Having dispensed with her subdued travel uniform many days prior, she now wore the more elaborate and formal kosmarch’s state dress—with the sigils of her authority circling her forearms at the cuffs, and a bright red band of silk running around her collar to match that of Starstate Nautilan’s proud national banner. When the eyes of the command module crew looked up, they met Vex’s just long enough to realize who she was, then they immediately looked down to their various keyboards and screens. Afraid—she knew—to hold her gaze too long, lest she become overly interested in them specifically. A predicament which few officers enjoyed, even at the higher ranks.
All except that sickly colonel, who seemed to delight in meeting Vex’s gaze, almost daring her to say something to him. Had he been any ordinary soldier, or even a common citizen, such impertinence would have been lethal on his part. But Colonel Jun came with General Ekk’s seal of approval, as their best—indeed, only—expert on Waymaker knowledge and lore.
So, the kosmarch tolerated the colonel. But only barely.
Having arrived at the Waypoint for Jaalit’s home star, Vex was eager to get on with the project at hand. And because she so seldom had the opportunity, she wanted to observe the crossing from the standpoint of a Waypoint pilot. A discipline for which Vex herself had initially tested, upon first entering government service. But she had not possessed the natural aptitude, so her abilities had been directed into other areas. W
hich had ended up suiting her just fine, in the long run. Waypoint pilots were expendable assets. A skilled kosmarch was a vital tool of the Starstate. Irreplaceable. Especially one about to embark upon the journey of a hundred lifetimes.
“Are all ships prepared to enter the Slipway?” Vex asked General Ekk, as the older man greeted her formally.
“They are, Madam Kosmarch. We only wait for your command to begin Waypoint passage. I admit, I was not prepared to entertain your presence here in the command module. You could have given the order from your quarters, if that would have been to your preference?”
“It would not have,” Golsubril sniffed. “I wanted to see the crossing from the standpoint of those who do the work. Specifically, I wanted to see the Key during Waypoint activation.”
“Interested in the Waymakers’ great gift to us?” Colonel Jun asked, inviting himself into the conversation, despite the fact that Golsubril had not included him.
She slowly pivoted in the air, using handholds to guide her way, and allowed the shorter man to enter the small circle with herself and Ekk.
“Yes,” Vex replied coolly. “Knowing that a thing functions, and observing its functioning firsthand, are different, don’t you agree?”
“Most definitely,” the colonel said, not adding the customary madam kosmarch which all subordinates reflexively attached to their speech when addressing Vex.
A Star Wheeled Sky Page 9