Careful not to injure herself, Loreanna arose (no dearth of handholds being provided in the cabin for those occasions when the vessel was without gravity, although they had been inconspicuous before now) to wash and dress. If she did as she planned, she might not soon have the luxury again,
although the bag into which the shower curtain folded was less pleasant than the tub.
A locker held Henry Martyn's vacuum suit (this ship had more than she had ever heard of) with a checklist and means of cinching it to smaller forms than it had been intended for. Beside it hung a maneuvering engine. To her surprise, the suit smelled fresh as she crawled into it, as if he made regular practice of having it cleaned. Why should that surprise her? Last night, after he had awakened and they had . . . well, in any case, he had not seemed at all dirty or unpleasant as she had always imagined even ordinary starsailors must. Afterward, before they began again to . . . anyway, he had taken trouble to bathe, apologizing over what he had claimed was the grime of three days' labor, although he must have bathed at intervals, even aboard the corvette.
The last thing she took was the weapon he had given her, feeling guilty as she tucked it into a pocket. Hating herself for irresolution, she opened the trap in the cabin floor which led to the boatdeck and made good her escape, even while Krumm was leading Bamagus-Willhart to meet Henry Martyn. Taking a risk she did not altogether ^preciate, she hung outside the unguarded airlock, aimed at the closest vessel, and thumbed a button. A trail of glittering crystals marked her path toward a Cormorant
Bamagus-Willhart did not hear the conversation between Krumm and Henry Martyn as it continued for a while after he had taken his leave.
"My sister-out-of-law is tough, Mr. Krumm. Even I am surprised. She has not only survived, she has kept things going, perhaps as a kind of relief from her personal suffering, when everyone else was ready to give up. I must, also with surprise, give Donol credit. I did not believe he had it in him. With Lia*s collusion, as we planned long ago, he pretends cooperation with the Black Usurper. He even helps plan a trap for Henry Martyn."
"Might an old starsailor ask, sir, what y'propose doin'?"
"Belay the humility, Krumm. Obviously such a message could not get ofiplanet without Morven's cooperation. Bamagus-Willhart must have been caught, yet he is obviously healthy. Thus he has been bribed or threatened—"
"Or both."
**And sent upon his way with word meant to lure Henry Martyn home."
"Might'n old starsailor ask, sir—"
"Grrr! We shall lay over, though I regret the wasted time, for repairs and supplies, as well as desperate thinking. I shall make arrangements, including an unexpected visit to the frigate lying out there, let her master lecture me again about the Privateer's Council, and set sail for home."
Beneath the table the nacyl stirred and flowed up to the seat of a chair. Tillie was out of the room. Tula glared until it made a sad, whiffling noise which altered her expression. Tentatively, she offered it a bit of the sweet dough, which it accepted and absorbed contentedly. She shook her head and returned to work, a faint smile upcurving the comers of her mouth.
"To the dismay," Krumm argued, "of a crew who could profit from a rest."
"I shall promise greater profit, Mr. Krumm. A chance for different gains than they have had before. They will accept. Now, if you will excuse me, I shall go see whether Lor— Mistress Daimler-Wilkinson—has awakened."
He arose and left, the flatsy flowing after. Krumm, having deduced what had passed between the two young people, nodded and grinned.
Loreanna's doubts did not desist, even as she was handed onboard the Cormorant. Crewbeings at the lifthatch responded more to her manner and accent than any surety she had to offer—she had brought some jewelry with her—for her passage. Shown the purser's cabin, she awaited return of the captain. No doubt remained upon one matter: she harbored other feelings—toward what had been done to her, the way she had responded, and the young man who had done it—than propriety expected. It was her relentless regard for truth—for the presence of which within her only she was responsible—that finally saved her from further indecision. It had occurred to her, during the drifting passage between ships, filled with the sound of her own breathing, that she was desired—if so mild a expression served— by Henry Martyn, for herself alone. For her person.
her hands, her mouth, her ability to gratify, increasing through the night as his to gratify her had increased. Perhaps even for her mind and heart which had resisted him while they surrendered. Not for any leverage she might bring to some scheme he was hatching.
The caravel was being prepared for the next leg of its journey, which she had been told was to Hanover, small coincidence, given Monopolitan trade routes and colonial policies. As she waited in her stolen vacuum suit, its helmet resting upon her breasts, in the office serving as an anteroom to the captain's, she discovered she had failed, even now, to escape from her dilemma. Knowing she loved Henry Martyn, she was unable to determine what to do about it. A thumping from the next room brought her out of her reverie.
"Back at latht," came a voice, "a free man. They catht our lineth off. We thail within the hour. Help me with thith boot, will you, Grubb?"
"Oy, sir. We've a passenger, ane wealthy one, though temp'rarily down upon 'er luck."
"The Theo you thay! By all meanth find her quarterth. We thhall thee to her further comfort onthe we are underweigh! By the Theo'th dirty underwear, we could uthe a change of luck, ourthelveth, eh, Grubb?"
"Sir?"
"A trap ith being laid, a nathty, clever trap, for a man— more like a boy—whom I ought, by all I live by, to detetht, by enemieth including hith own family! I tell you, the thooner we are away from thith bally nebula, and able to forget Thkye in the bargain, the better I thhall like it!"
"Yes, sir."
"I would not burden you, Grubb, but do you gueth what that weathel—you know what a weathel is—Donol Ithlay, retherved for a parting thrutht ath we took leave of hith accurthed world? He athked me, a thtarthhip captain, to kill Henry Martyn if I got a^hanthe, ath if I were a merthen-ary!"
Astonishment and outrage for Henry Martyn's sake rang through Loreanna's being as she unstrapped herself, arose from the straight-backed chair she had been sitting upon, and pushed herself across the room toward the adjoining quarters. She did not bother to knock.
388 HENRY MARTYN
"Captain—pardon me, I do not know your name—you must take me to the Osprey!" Despite the confusion which earlier had troubled her, she faced no difl&culty now, dum-founded as she was by the manner in which her moral universe had been inverted. Proper behavior consisted of remaining silent, leaving her erstwhile captor to whatever fate authority decreed. Yet her one determination was to find some way of warning the man she had begun to love.
Seated, half out of his suit and rubbing bootsore feet, the man looked up at her standing in the doorway. "Dallrane Bamaguth-Willhart, Mithtreth, eager to be of thervithe. Ready to convey you to Hanover, ath you athked. I am afraid many reathonth exthitht why I may not comply with your immediate requetht, not all of them conthiemed with prethervation of my own thkin."
"You do not make yourself clear, sir.'*
"Thurely you jetht. You thee, Mithtreth . . . but, I do not know your name, either, do I? How awkward. In any cathe, it ith too late. I am afraid the infamouth and dreaded corthair Othprey hath jutht catht off, ath we thhall thhortly be doing, raithed thtarthail and departed."
Chapter XLII: The Ghosts of Somon
Beneath a sky the color of wet iron, underlit by fitful lightnings, a cold wind swept the moss-covered, somehow defeated-looking contours of the Burial Plain of Somon, carrying with it moisture which was not quite rain.
"Burial" in the place-name referred to that of a civilization. Something had lived here, eons in the past, so long ago that archaeologists, amateur and otherwise, were locked in perpetual conflict over whether some particular item which had just been found was artificial or a pro
duct of erosion. Whatever it was, this monumental enigma, it had not been remotely human. It had built, loved perhaps, fought (noth-
ing would grow upon the Plain save moss, so altered was the soil by isotopes of war), and died, leaving artifacts so durable no tool known to the imperia-conglomerate would mar their seamless surfaces, so ancient that weather had softened their shapes into unrecognizability.
Waiting for his captain to return, Krumm ran a hand over the opalescent monolith beside him. It thrust out of the tiny-leaved vegetation ten measures. The Somonese steersman of their lighter had told him that this, and twenty-two identical objects within the radius of a klomme, reached into the crust of Somon so deeply that their bases had never been discovered. It made Krumm shudder. That something so unutterably enormous, so inexpressably old, could be reduced to an amorphous memento of its once-powerful makers filled him with horror. The wind lashed wet, straggling fingers across his face, mocking him. The big man shivered, not only at this unaccustomed exposure to the elemental forces of a planet's surface. He was thinking of his captain.
For the remainder of his life, Krumm sensed, Henry Martyn would divide eternity into halves: After Loreanna and Before. The first time took a man that way. Over the past days, the boy had never offered to share, not with even his friend and loyal lieutenant, his feelings upon discovering that she had seized the opportunity of Bamagus-Willhart's visit to flee the Osprey, and (it was presumed that this accounted for his silence) his own presence.
Receiving his message from Mistress Woodgate, it was not for Skye that Henry Martyn had set sail. From the beginning, Krumm was aware, the boy had realized his path would lead him homeward, soon or late. Having accepted his captaincy, and again become master of his destiny, he had given the matter much thought, discussed it at length with the giant baker, even undertaken certain preparations against the day. Thus he had ordered Krumm to lay an inward course, away from the enveloping cometary shell of which Nosaer was an outpost, toward the outlaw sanctuary of the twinned planets Sisao and Somon, where, rather than the liberty he (and his crew) had long anticipated, he began at once selling valuables for cash, arranging unusual purchases, persuading crewbeings that the enterprise they were about
390 HENRY MARTYN
to undertake would be worth any minor sacrifice he asked them to make, and holding a succession of meetings with an odd assortment of individuals, not all of them human.
"And spending rather too much energy, I think me." Krumm had ventured this solicitous if insubordinate opinion during their first orbits within the complicated influence of two worlds, although it was only to his wives he had spoken (the captain having left his first oflftcer out of his planetside arrangements), not only of Henry Martyn, but of a boy who had been called Arran. He had little time to spare for such concerns. Constant adjustments necessary to maintain their position occupied his full attention. "I know the signs. He works himself to death as an alternative to thinking about life."
"Too much time, he says." Mathilde covered a bowl of dough which had not risen to her satisfaction. "Is he that impatient to be away from here?"
"That he be." Krumm bent over a half-consumed mug of steaming caff he had meant to pour here and carry to the quarterdeck. "But not 'til he's done startin' certain machinations. Afore ye ask, no: I don't know what they be. Nor much do I care. He'll tell old Krumm when the time's ripe, and what he plans'U work. That much I've learned of Henry Martyn. The conversation I believe he'd most profit by, he won't have with me, nor anybody else."
The women had clucked and frowned over this sad but undeniable wisdom. Krumm took his caffcup and his troubles to the quarterdeck. For a while he stood at the taffrail, gazing through the §-field at the planets. As with Nosaer, it was impossible to achieve stable orbit about Sisao or Somon. Where the icebound fragment possessed insufl&cient gravity, these boasted a surplus, deriving from two sources, overlapping to cross purposes. This precluded lubberlifting, and constituted the system's final natural defense against invasion. Arriving ships assumed station at a libration point, to be met by variations upon their own auxiliaries. Annihilator-powered, using water for reaction mass, these transferred cargo and passengers to the surfaces below.
Many operators vied for custom. It had been aboard one such vehicle that Henry Martyn had condescended to take
Knimm upon what he explained would be his last errand before leaving Sisao-Somon behind. A buffeting reentry had tinged the leading edges of its stubby wings dull red, coming near to using up whatever courage Krumm had brought along to the excursion. That, and a terrifying descent through a local thunderstorm, had consumed hours and had been nothing like the calm ride in a lubberlift, with its rigid, §-reinforced cabelle to absorb the vagaries and violence of planetary atmosphere.
"Wait for me, if you will," the boy had asked once they had set down in the empty, ruin-cluttered desert, "I shall not be long."
Krumm was glad of the outing, doubly glad it was to Somon, which did not remind him of the ordeals of his youth. He felt frustrated by his captain's reticence. What could he not be trusted to assist with? What secret of Henry Martyn's would he ever betray? As always, the boy was accompanied by a nacyl, over whose trailing end the first officer stumbled climbing from the lifter. "By the Ceo's shorts —pardon me askin', sir, what is this thing's name?"
He raised an eyebrow, glancing between his friends. "I fear neither of us could say it, as I should know who have given it my best. Clicks and whistles I gather even his own folk find difficult to pronounce."
"You don't say."
"That's the point. He rather fancies adopting a human name."
"And what might that be, sir?"
Henry Martyn grinned. "Phoebus."
The Burial Plain had been an obvious place for a rendezvous. Before too many minutes had seen them huddled against huge artificial stones which seemed to suck warmth from their bodies even more efficiently than wind and rain, another small craft, of obvious alien design vague with distance and weather, swooped out of the overcast and settled upon the mossy ground without disgorging passengers. It was at this point that Krumm had been asked to wait. Boy and alien made their way toward the other machine, the former stooping beneath its backswept wing, and, limned by its golden inner glow, climbed into its belly. Even a hundred measures away, through the whistle and
392 HENRY MARTYN
Spatter of the weather, Krumm could hear metal and plastic ticking as both vehicles cooled.
Time passed. After what seemed a long wait until Krumm glanced at his timepiece and learned better, Henry Martyn emerged with his nacyl companion, lingering to converse with something which resembled another animated bathing towel. Soon, enveloped, as it seemed to Krumm, in a glowing mist trailing off into evaporating tendrils—from reflex, Krumm raised one of his thrustibles in a gesture protective of his captain, realizing, as he did, how absurd it was—boy and flatsy strode and flowed respectively across the damp moss toward the monolith. Krumm had no idea what the light-filled fog was—had been, for now it had vanished. Henry Martyn waved from several measures away.
"I am quite uninjured. What you saw was no more than the residue of a harmless, beneficial virus. Do not be alarmed, good friend.*'
Krumm disobeyed this order. "A virus, sir?"
"Indeed, what we achieved centuries ago with rare metals and wafers of silicon—the ulsic —the nacyl undertook with microorganisms. It is their greatest accomplishment, more compact and portable than our contrivances. The virus replicate themselves, saving the necessity of manufacture."
"To what purpose, if I may ask, sir?"
"To what purposes do we put the ulsic? They can work cumulatively, combining their minute capabilities, or parallel, creating great calculatory engines, say for navigation. They can enthille and relay messages or be used directly over limited distance. This is the means by which the nacyl saved my life, having infected me whilst I was feeding them, because they liked me!"
Krumm shook his head, the
idea of infecting one's friends with a virus being somewhat scandalizing, whatever its purpose. By now the boy walked beside him, nacyl following, as they approached the waiting lighter.
"One reason we are here is simply to catch up with the latest virus-borne gossip. I am afraid that must serve you for explanation. All will be made clear in the fullness of time. Meanwhile, wake our steersman, for we are free to depart,
not only from this funereal planet, but the system it belongs to."
"To Skye, sir?"
"To Skye, sir. May whatever gods still linger in a universe long ago grown weary of them have mercy upon my enemies, for surely I shall not!"
When Osprey crossed the ill-defined margin of Sisao-Somon's cometary halo and stretched her figurative wings upon the empty reaches of the Deep, the weather proved no better than upon the Burial Plain. A neutrino stonn was brewing, if Krumm was any judge, rare and ferocious, which would test the mettle of both starship and crew. It seemed to Krumm the captain was grateful for an excuse to take command, to issue orders in a harsh shout beginning to betray traces of his full-grown voice, to steer with his own hands the tiller-ball upon the quarterdeck, even to fling himself aloft with topmen to reef starsail and inspect rigging for worn cabelle which could spell death for them all, did the screaming hurricane of particles to which §-permeated mesh was not selectively transparent seize upon them in its mighty rage.
At present, Krumm rolled the tiller under his own broad palm. Two thirds of a klomme above the storm-slanted maindeck, Henry Martyn trod a footcabelle and clung to the outer tip of the dorsal foreyard, supporting himself by his armpits, edging toward a broken cleat upon which the dorsal forestaysail had snagged, cursing like the crewbeings behind him the necessity to do so, yet, inside himself, exulting in the fact that he possessed such strength and courage, as well as frequent opportunity of testing it.
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