The glowing matrices manifested in the air before them and the stars came to life in gold and silver above the table in their dense and complex pattern. As before, on Conrad’s World, in the village where Lammia and her family and friends had been slaughtered, one star near the center pulsed green and bright. Cale pointed.
“That’s where we’re going,” he said.
Myrok had taken the codex into the next cabin to attempt synchronizing the chart with the ship’s navigational systems in the hope of identifying the star. He’d been in there for more than four hours, and still there was no luck. Captain Bol-Terra had gone to meet another loading crew checking in, leaving Cale and Sidonie alone in the bridge to wait.
Now Bol-Terra returned and sat at the table, strapping into the seat and glancing toward the cabin door. “Nothing from Myrok?”
“Not yet.”
Bol-Terra nodded. “I have a few more questions.”
“Go ahead,” Cale replied.
“What about all the cargo?” He picked at his ear again, over and over, a habit that had become irritating to Cale. “It’s real freight, and there’s a lot of it. I oversaw some of the loading myself.”
“We’ll be making the first leg,” Cale told him. “We don’t want people here to think it’s anything but a normal freight run.”
The captain reflected on that, then asked, “Are you coming with us?”
“Yes,” Sidonie answered. “We both are.”
“Will you tell me why we’re going to this as yet unidentified star?”
Cale shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we get there.”
Bol-Terra’s mouth moved briefly down and up in a kind of facial shrug, then moved into the suggestion of a smile. “Will there be extra pay?”
“Yes. For everyone. Will the crew be okay with the changes?”
The captain nodded. “We’re a small crew, and a good crew. We’ve worked together for years. Treat them right, pay them fairly, and they’ll do everything you ask.” He tipped his head forward, half closing his eyes. “And they’ll keep it to themselves.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Sidonie said.
“What happens if Myrok can’t ID the star?” Bol-Terra asked.
“Don’t know,” Cale replied. “I’ll take it somewhere that has greater resources.”
“Like Lagrima’s Academy of Astronomy?”
“Yes, someplace like that.”
“Which would be the end of any secrecy. Word would get out, not just about that ‘star chart,’ but about the book as well.”
“You know what it is?” Cale asked.
“I can guess,” Bol-Terra replied. “I’ve heard the stories. Never believed them before.” He tugged at his ear. “I guess I do now.”
Myrok came in then, face flushed with relief and excitement.
“Got it,” he said.
Before they returned to Lagrima, Cale and Sidonie took the codex with them to one of the loaded cargo holds. Just inside one of the inspection hatches, a series of cubicles had been built into the bulkhead for the storage of smaller delicate or valuable items. All of the cubicles in this hold were empty. Cale placed the codex into one of them, programmed and locked it with a code he and Sidonie had agreed on earlier, and activated the gel-foam that would surround and protect it.
He turned to Sidonie. “Something happens to either one of us, the other will go on, bring the codex through the gate. No turning back. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” she replied.
Cale felt suddenly exhausted. His eyes wanted to close, his whole body wanted to shut down.
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s finally happening,” he said. “All these years . . .”
Sidonie nodded. “Somehow it feels more unreal to me now than it did two or three years ago, or even ten years ago. Yet we’re only a few days away from heading out.”
“You’ve stuck with me all this time. Even when you didn’t like or agree with what I was doing.”
“That’s how it is with us, Cale. That’s how it always will be.”
They regarded one another silently, then started back to the shuttle.
Cale found his mother at the Family cemetery, which until today he had not even known existed. Wearing a loose and flowing robe of pale green decorated with sprays of golden leaves, she knelt before a polished black stone marker. Stripes of shade and evening sun lay across her, bronzing her skin.
The cemetery was situated in a small grove of low, scraggy trees, a carpet of thick mosses dotted with black or white or gray stone markers of various shapes and sizes, some newer, but many worn and aged. The only sounds within the grove were the dry rustle of leaves and the gurgle of water tumbling over rocks from somewhere nearby.
Cale approached his mother, then stopped and stood a few feet behind her and to one side. He could read his father’s name on the marker before her—Faulkner Alexandros—but he couldn’t make out the smaller inscription and dates.
“It’s just a cenotaph,” she said. “His body was never recovered.” She took a single, long-stemmed violet flower from within the folds of her robe and laid it before the marker. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, perhaps in silent prayer.
The stripes of sun narrowed while those of shadow widened, the sun now touching only the top of her hair. Cale watched his mother and wondered if he would see her again, and wondered whether it mattered to either of them. But as soon as he asked that of himself, he realized that it did matter to him, even if it held no meaning for her.
She raised her head, glanced briefly at him, then gestured toward another black stone marker to her left. “That one is yours,” she said. “It, too, is a cenotaph . . . for the same reason.”
“You know me, then.”
His mother slowly shook her head from side to side. “I only know the dead.” Then, not looking at him, she added, “You’re leaving.”
“Yes,” he replied. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“No one ever knows . . . and too many never come back at all.”
“I’ll be back if I can,” he told her.
She smiled faintly. “At least you said ‘if.’ None of the others ever did.”
She rose to her feet, took a few steps toward the left and forward, then knelt before Cale’s cenotaph. She laid another violet flower gently before the polished black stone with Cale’s name carved across its face.
“Goodbye, Mother,” he said.
When he was certain she would not respond, he turned away and left her there with her memories and her grief.
Cale and Sidonie rose into the shadow of Lagrima’s night, slowly spiraling upward in the space elevator toward the docking station. They carried even less than they had brought with them when they had first arrived nearly five years ago. Cale shouldered the rucksack he’d kept since his days on the other side of the Divide, and Sidonie held only a small satchel. A few personal items. Everything else had been loaded aboard the Night Traveler days or weeks ago. The crew, too, had been aboard for days, along with Cicero, Aliazar, and Harlock.
Below them, the lights of Lagrima glistened within an uncomfortable silence, the gold and crimson falcon near the outer edge slowly diminishing. The hovering and flying multicolored lights above the city looked like bits of shining color unattached to anything substantial, blown about by chaotic breezes.
Home?
It was still a question for Cale. He had never felt at home anywhere, and didn’t really know what that felt like. He turned and looked down once more at the receding lights, at the city and world that fell slowly and steadily away from them. They continued their ascent in silence, each alone with their thoughts as they headed toward a place and a time unknown, toward a future that still hid from them all its infinite and unknowable self.
BOOK FOUR
ONE
The Night Traveler [jumped] . . .
. . . and remerged into the universe.
Adrift, the stars innumerable, the night sky thick with them,
like blackcloth sprinkled with the dust of gemstones.
Cale lay back in an observation lounge seat, the steelglass dome’s metal canopy fully retracted to reveal the deep skies of space. He sensed movement, like gentle rocking on the water, though he knew he was stable and motionless. He recalled that night nearly twenty years past (or was it even longer?) when he’d been pulled out of the freezing lake and lay shivering on the floor of the boat, looking up at a clear night sky. So many stars, he’d thought at the time, but it was nothing like this.
He could lose himself in this vast and empty expanse, and he thought it might not be so bad to remain lost.
A slight vibration alerted him, and the floor hatch opened. Myrok pulled himself up and into the lounge, sealed the hatch, then settled into the control seat as Cale sat up. Myrok nodded in greeting.
“We’ve got what we hoped for,” he said. “Hold on.” He manipulated the seat controls and the lounge began to slowly rotate around the circumference of the ship.
Cale fought the vertigo that washed over him as the stars trailed silver arcs overhead; he clutched the seat arms and closed his eyes until the lounge smoothly came to rest.
“Sorry,” Myrok said. “I forget not everybody’s used to this.”
Cale opened his eyes when he felt relatively steady. “I’m all right.”
Two sets of glowing crosshairs appeared on the clear glass dome, one green and one red. They moved in tandem, just centimeters apart.
“Yours is the green,” Myrok said. The crosshairs came to a stop low on the dome’s horizon. Centered in the green crosshairs was a large bright star that stood out against the others. “We’ve confirmed it,” Myrok added. “That’s the star in the codex chart.”
“How far?”
“It would take us more than a year under conventional propulsion to reach the inner orbits where the gate should be.” He made a huffing sound. “This is what happens when you’re the first to go somewhere.” He shrugged. “We’re going to make a tertiary [jump] which will bring us a lot closer. There’s something which actually makes it easier for us, though. All the incoming data indicates that there isn’t a single planet orbiting.”
“Not one?” Cale asked.
“Not one. Nothing of significant mass. Maybe we’ll find what amounts to a giant hunk of rock or ice, but nothing big enough to cause us any trouble when we remerge. We should be able to get in close enough to start searching for the gate right away.”
“Any chance we could remerge with the gate and destroy it?”
Myrok grinned. “Sure, there’s a chance. But there’s probably a better chance you’ll spontaneously combust in the next five minutes.” He got up from the seat. “You should head back to your cabin. Coordinates are set, and the launch sequence is on to make the [jump] in six hours.”
Cale remained in the observation lounge for a time, however, losing himself again in the stars. So far from Lagrima, from Conrad’s World, from everything in his life. In some other time as well as some other place.
They had made the first leg of their registered itinerary, transuding to Winter’s Eye and docking at the orbiting transit station. There they’d sold and offloaded the cargo slated for sale to that world, but instead of arranging for the purchase of replacement cargo, they’d sold off the rest of what they still carried—intended for other worlds and better prices—trimming the ship substantially. Three weeks later, with no signs of a Sarakheen or other ship trailing them, they’d left the system and made the [jump] which had brought them here.
This last [jump] would bring them near the gate. Until now, he’d tried not to think of the possibility that the gate no longer existed, or never had. Or that they had not accurately read the codex’s holographic chart and the gate was located at some other star that they would never find. He shook his head at himself—it was far too late for doubts or second thoughts.
He got up from the seat, opened the floor hatch, and lowered himself through it.
The ship [jumped] again . . .
. . . and once more remerged into real space.
The sun blazed before them as the star’s image filled the wall screen in the bridge. A bright silvery light tinged with . . . red . . . orange . . . Cale sensed movement from Myrok’s hand and the image shrank, the sun pulled away from them until it was no more than a fourth of its original size, letting the surrounding night and stars appear on the screen.
“Not much to see, really,” Myrok said. “A sun. Nothing unusual about it, nothing new for us. We’re just a lot closer now.”
“And the gate?” Cale asked.
“We’re searching for it. Nothing yet. It doesn’t help that we don’t know what we’re looking for. If the Jaaprana wanted us to find it, you’d think they would have been more specific about just what it was.” He snorted. “Gate. What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t think they were interested in making it easy for us. Or for anyone else.”
“Maybe so. I’d settle in for a while, if I were you. We might find it in a day or two, or it might take us weeks, even months.”
“Or we might never find it,” Cale admitted.
“I’ll just pretend you didn’t say that,” Myrok replied.
Cale dreamt of Harlock and Cicero. Harlock had leathery wings tipped with feathers, one of the wings broken and dragging in the sand, and Cicero swayed and chanted out visions to his enraptured companion as they crouched before a burning shack. Cale felt disembodied, as if he were only observing from nearby but not actually present in any real way. He knew somehow that Cicero was having visions and relating them to Harlock through the chants, but Cale couldn’t make out any of the words.
A bell chimed and Cale looked around, searching for the source of the sound, but the area around them was a wasteland, flat and empty and uninhabited except for the three of them—or the two of them, since he wasn’t really there. The bell chimed again. Neither Harlock nor Cicero responded.
Then Cale realized that he was dreaming, that the chiming came from outside his dream, and that he needed to waken. But Cicero’s chanting held him, and now Harlock turned to him, acknowledging his presence. Harlock’s expression told Cale to stay, that Cicero had messages for him, messages from some other place and time that were meant for him and him alone.
The bell chimed again, and Cale sensed an insistence to it. He forced himself to pull away from Harlock and Cicero and dragged himself up and out of sleep, struggling until at last he was able to open his eyes to the darkness of his cabin and the chiming of his door.
Weariness weighed him down, but he managed to get out of the cot and stagger to the door, pressing the square panel that opened it.
Myrok stood in the pale blue corridor light that marked night on the ship. “Found the gate,” he said.
TWO
“Well,” said Myrok a bit later when they’d gathered in the bridge, “we think it’s the gate.”
There wasn’t much to see at first. They were still days away from reaching it, and all that appeared on the wall screen, even magnified by the ship’s telescopes, was a vaguely hexagonal shape surrounded by a glistening halo.
“That thing is impossible,” Myrok said.
Captain Bol-Terra nodded his agreement, tugged at his ear, but didn’t speak.
“What do you mean?” Sidonie asked.
“It’s not orbiting the star. No orbit, no angular momentum, it’s just holding a static position approximately thirty-three million kilometers away. The mass of the star should have sucked that thing in as soon as it got there.”
“I don’t understand,” Cale said. “Couldn’t it have some kind of propulsion to keep it in position?”
Myrok shook his head. “It could, but it doesn’t. It would need acceleration, maybe not much because of its small mass, but some. And we can’t pick up any traces of propulsion, no indication of any kind that an engine is firing. We do, on the other hand, get impossible mass readings from the thing. Fluctuating around a q
uantity you might expect from an object of its size, but rising to nearly as high as a small planet and going all the way down to zero.” He shrugged. “At least that’s what we think we’re reading. And before you ask, no, we have no idea what could produce those kinds of fluctuations, or what they mean, or if they have anything to do with the gate being able to maintain its position.”
“So what do we do now?” Cicero asked.
Myrok and Captain Bol-Terra looked at Cale with raised eyebrows.
“Nothing,” Cale said. “Approach, and see what happens as we get closer.” He paused, looking around the cabin. “Unless someone has another idea or suggestion.”
No one did.
Myrok led Cale silently through the ship to one of the cargo holds, this one now empty like all the others, and shut the door behind them. They stood on a narrow platform of grillwork and looked out over the dark and empty hold lit only by a few firefly lights that barely kept complete darkness at bay. The walls were covered with huge bundles of meshed cable, long coils of rope, collapsed metal bands.
“I think we’ve got a serious problem,” Myrok told Cale in a low voice, as if someone might hear him even in this empty room. Cale waited, and Myrok went on. “A few hours ago a message pod was launched from the ship.”
“What’s a message pod?”
“A miniature rocket, in essence. Nothing but a small conventional engine for initial thrust, a scaled-down Barlis drive to make a [jump], and a transmitter. The closest thing we have to interstellar communication. They contain recorded messages, and they have specific [jump] coordinates programmed to take them to their destination system. Once they remerge into real space, they begin transmitting their message.”
“And someone launched one from this ship?”
The Rosetta Codex Page 23