The Void-transit was a short one this time, barely long enough for the faint queasiness of transition to subside before it was time for emergence. When they came out, the displays on the bridge showed images of a marbled, temperate globe: A tracery of clouds; glittering ice caps; wide blue oceans and brown-and-green continents.
The crew of sus-Peledaen’s Rain-on-Dark-Water, now of Forty-two, watched the new world grow closer. The Entiboran ship put itself into high orbit with the same efficiency as it had taken itself through the Void, and began transmitting a signal. Arekhon, waiting on Forty-two’s bridge with Captain sus-Mevyan, hoped that the signal wasn’t a pre-set message giving somebody orders to shoot them on sight.
Enough time passed for Arekhon to stop worrying about an armed attack and begin worrying instead about being ignored. Finally, the communications link crackled open, and a faint voice began speaking in Entiboran. Arekhon moved closer to the console, straining both mind and hearing to make sense of the alien, signal-distorted words.
“Swift Passage Freight Carrier Number Forty-two, this is Inspace Control. State the nature of your emergency.”
Arekhon glanced over at Captain sus-Mevyan. At her curt nod of permission, he spoke to the audio pickup. “We have assumed standard orbit GG-12”—at least, if GG-12 was the orbit set into the Return Home—”by the command of Grand Councillor Demazze.”
There was a brief pause. “Swift Passage Freight Carrier Number Forty-two, we have received your message. Please stand by for instructions.”
The link crackled shut. The wait that followed lasted long enough for Arekhon to start getting nervous again. Then the link came back on.
“Swift Passage Freight Carrier Number Forty-two, prepare to transfer your crew to deep-space passenger vessel Octagon Diamond. Previously designated personnel will remain aboard Forty-two and await a shuttle to the surface.”
Sus-Mevyan looked at Arekhon curiously. “‘Previously designated personnel’?” she asked as soon as the link had closed. “Who are they?”
“Lord Garrod,” he said. “Pilot-Principal Inadi. And me. For negotiations, I suppose—we’re about the only ones who speak the language well enough to hold a conversation.”
“That mysterious letter of yours again?”
He nodded. “I don’t understand it either. But we’ve tried doing things our own way and gotten nowhere.”
Octagon Diamond was enormous. Forty-two was pocket-sized by comparison. Not even the lost Rain-on-Dark-Water had been so big.
Transfer to the Diamond, accordingly, was slow and cumbersome. The tunnel connecting Forty-two with the larger ship was a flexible zero-gravity tube; pressure-suited crew members, towing their bundles of personal effects, made the awkward journey along its length in a long, floating line.
Once the transfer was completed, the Octagon Diamond disconnected from Forty-two and assumed an orbit not far away—at least, not far away as things went in space. The three Eraasians still aboard Forty-two donned their pressure suits and waited for the promised shuttle.
Elaeli was carrying the helmet of her suit in the crook of one arm. She ran her free hand through her hair. “You know, I hope we’re not doing something really stupid.”
“So do I,” Arekhon said. “But I don’t think we have much choice. We’re a long way from home in an unfamiliar ship, and if these people take offense and decide to stop us we may never get back.”
“Have you seen the eiran here?” Garrod asked.
“I haven’t had the time for a proper meditation,” he admitted. In the aftermath of the bloody takeover of Forty-two, he’d also lacked the inclination. That would have to change soon, he supposed. “Or the opportunity, with the ship so crowded.”
“You should make the opportunity,” Garrod said. “Someone, somewhere near here, is taking the lines in hand. There is order—not much of it, I grant you—coming out of all this chaos.”
“Our mysterious friend, do you think?” asked Elaeli.
“Mysterious, certainly. And powerful, if he has ships like the Diamond at his disposal to give away. Friendly …”
Arekhon shrugged. “Who knows? So far, at least, he doesn’t seem to wish us ill.”
A hooting sound over the ship’s audio broke into their conversation—Forty-two’s warning that the shuttle was making ready to approach the lock. Arekhon put on his helmet and sealed his pressure suit for the transfer.
No need this time for a clumsy swim through a transfer tube; the shuttle turned out to be small enough to mate with the outer port directly. Changing ships was a matter of climbing a ladder that extended itself from Forty-two ’s transfer lock into that of the shuttle—more of the automatic machinery that had made it possible to run the ship with such a small crew.
The shuttle itself was scarcely more than a passenger pod, unenhanced by local gravity or any other amenities. The main compartment held several objects which Arekhon recognized as acceleration couches, though of unfamiliar design. He took the nearest one, and indicated to Garrod and Elaeli that they should make their choice of the others.
Forty-two’s ladder retracted, and the hatch cycled shut. The sound of another hatch opening somewhere inside the shuttle made Arekhon look around, and he saw that two men—two people, at any rate—had emerged from the forward compartment. They wore tight, quilted blue livery over all of their bodies, from boots to gloves, and helmets like round, mirrored blue globes.
Moving easily in the zero gravity, they approached the couches and adjusted the webbing that secured Arekhon and the other two passengers on their couches. Again, the purpose of the webbing was obvious, but the design was not like that of the homeworlds: Couches here had a central strap running down the center of the occupant’s body, with webbing stretching to either side at the shoulder, chest, hips, thighs, and ankles. When all of the webbing was in place, the passengers were effectively immobilized.
If somebody wanted to do us harm, Arekhon reflected, here and now would be an excellent opportunity. No need to take any action; just leave the inconvenient visitors tied up on the couches and go away.
The two Entiborans returned to the forward compartment, and Arekhon heard the mechanical sound of the closing hatch. Then all at once the bottom dropped out, and Arekhon felt his stomach heading for his windpipe as the shuttle accelerated downward. They’re in a hurry, he thought, as the blood rushed to his head and his vision blurred. And they don’t believe in coddling the passengers.
Abruptly the pressure reversed, so that he felt many times heavier than his natural weight, and a low moaning vibration filled the craft, even through the padding and restraints. Side forces pressed him first one way against the restraining ties and then the other. The motion ceased and the weight became even, not the artificial pull of a ship in space, but real planet-bound gravity.
The lights flickered once, then returned, burning more brightly and evenly than before. Silence replaced the sounds of motors and engines, and even the hum of the ventilators.
The door sounded a moment later, and the two blue-clad Entiborans returned to help the three passengers out of their couches. The Entiborans didn’t speak, but indicated by signs and gestures that it was now possible to remove the pressure suits, though they made no move to take off their own.
Arekhon unsuited and sat up, rubbing his shoulders to return the circulation to them. Opposite the lock where Rain-on-Dark-Water’s crew had debarked, a section of the shuttle’s deck had swung down to form a ramp. Beyond the ramp, external lights glowed—not the natural light of a star, but the artificial light of electricity flowing through carbon rods. It was hard to tell from within the shuttle, but Arekhon thought that it was night outside.
The two Entiborans withdrew again to the forward compartment, still without speaking. Garrod swung his legs over the side of his couch and nodded toward the lowered ramp.
“The message seems fairly clear,” he said. “We go that way. I can already vouch for the gravity and atmosphere being well within homewor
ld tolerance.”
The ground at the bottom of the ramp was black and hard and wet. The light came from spotlights mounted on tall poles. Beyond the protecting overhang of the vessel, a heavy rain was slanting down, the falling drops turning golden in the artificial light. A figure was approaching, a tall man silhouetted against the spotlights’ glare.
When the man arrived, Arekhon saw that he wore a rain garment of some kind, a sleeveless rectangle of green fabric worn surcoat-wise, with a hood in the center enclosing his face and yellow hair. In one hand he carried a walking-staff almost as tall as he was; with the other, he held out to the travelers three packets made of the same slick cloth as his surcoat. Unfolded, the packets proved to be rainwear similar to his own.
Elaeli smiled at the man as she pulled on her surcoat and drew up the hood. “Thank you,” she said in the local tongue. “I hate getting my hair wet.”
“I am Master Lenset, aide to Councillor Demazze,” the man said in the same language. “I ask that you follow me.”
37:
Year 1128 E. R.
ENTIBORAN SPACE, STANDARD ORBIT GG-12:
OCTAGON DIAMOND
ENTIBOR: SECURE LANDING ZONE
ERAASI: DEMAIZEN OLD HALL
Iulan Vai sat cross-legged on her bunk aboard Octagon Diamond, writing a message. The Diamond was a luxurious ship by Eraasian standards—maybe by the standards of this side of the galaxy as well; Vai didn’t know—and for the first time since leaving Hanilat she wasn’t sharing quarters with anyone but herself.
It made some things a great deal easier.
SUS-PELEDAEN SHIP RAIN-ON-DARK-WATER LOST, she tapped out on the tiny keys of her message pad. CREW AND CIRCLE RETURNING IN SHIP OF LOCAL MAKE. RECOMMEND PREPARING SHIPYARDS FOR EXTENSIVE CHANGES IN ENGINE CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES. SEE ATTACHED COPY OF SUS-PELEDAEN ENGINEER’S PRELIMINARY REPORT AND DIAGRAMS.
Vai was proud of that attached copy. Acquiring it—in the midst of the worry about disposing of the Rain, and then about Forty-two’s auto-controlled transit to Entibor—had taken all of her old skills and some of her new ones, and she had enjoyed herself a great deal. It was good to know that taking up Magery hadn’t ruined her touch.
Getting the report back to Theledau sus-Radal was going to be easy by comparison. Captain sus-Mevyan had brought all of the Rain’s message-drones across to the Diamond, which meant that Vai could hide her report in the general clutter of information.
A drone was mostly data storage with a Void-capable engine, and it would backtrack along the Rain’s trail of navigational beacons at speeds a manned vessel couldn’t match. News of the Rain’s adventures would reach the sus-Peledaen shipyards well before the Diamond appeared in Eraasian space.
And thanks to her efforts, the news would reach the sus-Radal yards as well. She wondered if Natelth sus-Khalgath talked family business with his younger brother any more, and what Arekhon would say if he found out that she had told Theledau sus-Radal about Forty-two’s engines.
Worry about that when you get home, she told herself. Meanwhile … a private cabin makes a lot of things easier.
The guide led Arekhon, Garrod, and Elaeli across the rain-swept landing area to an armored metal doorway let into the side of a hill. The doorway swung outward, admitting them to the anteroom of what was clearly an extensive underground complex.
The room was paneled in wood, with non-structural but still impressive rib-groined vaults overhead, and dim but pleasant lighting. Soft carpets covered the floor beneath their feet, though from its coldness and lack of give Arekhon thought that the surface under the carpet might be stone rather than wood. The guide led them through the antechamber and down a long corridor, without bothering to turn aside for any of the closed doors along the paneled walls.
They came at last to an open doorway, and passed through it into what Arekhon guessed was a reception hall of some sort, a long narrow room furnished with a number of alcoves and conversational nooks. Its high ceiling was painted with heroic scenes in bright colors, showing foreshortened figures ascending into a mass of clouds and bright light.
Something to honor the ancestors, Arekhon thought, then shook his head. For all you know, it could be favorite pictures from a children’s bedtime storybook. These people are not like us.
“Wait here for my lord Demazze,” their guide said, and, bowing, departed through one of the room’s side-arches.
They waited. Arekhon felt uncomfortably conscious of his wet surcoat shedding rainwater onto the carpet. Elaeli was craning her neck to look at the ceiling. Garrod, meanwhile, stood in the center of the room with his arms folded across his chest, seemingly unintimidated by their reception and the elegant decor.
Maybe he saw more impressive stuff than this all the time when he was here before, Arekhon thought. Or else he’s a better actor than I’ll ever be.
A fanfare sounded over an unseen speaker—the notes had the tinny, remote quality of a synthesized recording—and a man entered the room through a sliding doorway that had been concealed in the paneling. He was tall and solidly broad-shouldered, with a heavy shock of grey hair and a close-trimmed, iron-grey beard.
Arekhon recognized him at once. The letter aboard Forty-two had not lied; this was Garrod syn-Aigal sus-Demaizen, as Arekhon and Narin had pulled him out of the Void at the end of the great working.
Arekhon looked at him closely. Is he already mad, I wonder? His letter was certainly strange enough.
But the Councillor’s eyes, while brighter and holding more suppressed excitement than Arekhon found comforting, were at the moment sane.
“I’m Councillor Demazze,” the newcomer said. “No need for introductions—I know all three of you very well. I’ve been waiting for you to show up for years now; I’d begun to think I might have made an error when I did the initial calculations, but it was all so long ago I couldn’t remember.”
“You know us?” Elaeli asked. “How?”
Garrod was regarding the Councillor with suspicion. Demazze’s lined and weathered face was not the one that he was accustomed to seeing in the mirror, but Arekhon didn’t expect the difference to puzzle him much longer. And yet the Councillor himself had set up this meeting … Arekhon wished he knew what was going on.
“You came through the Void?” Garrod asked.
“Of course,” said the Councillor. “But we don’t have time to compare notes. The political situation is terribly tense right now—Hegemony troops all around, and the Meteunese—but everything will work out, I’m certain of it, if we can just get all the papers signed in time …”
Elaeli said, “Papers?”
Demazze waved a hand. “Diplomatic credentials. For you especially; the nation-state that I judge to be most receptive to the idea of open trade has a matrilineal succession, and I’ve had enormous trouble getting the current ruler to regard me as anything more than an impractical scholar. Perhaps you may have better luck.”
“I don’t want to be an ambassador,” said Elaeli. “I’m a shiphandler who wants to be Fleet-Captain someday.”
“A laudable ambition—but if you would do an old man a favor and go through the portfolio over there on the side table …”
“Humor him, Pilot-Principal,” Garrod said curtly.
Elaeli glanced from Garrod to Arekhon, who nodded. She moved off in the direction of the alcove the Councillor had indicated. Garrod, eyebrows bristling, turned back to Demazze.
“What in the world are you up to, Councillor?” he demanded. “‘Diplomatic credentials,’ indeed!”
Demazze smiled. “What in the world, exactly. You and I, Lord sus-Demaizen, we know how to organize and run a planetary government based on recognized family structures. It seems natural to us. But these poor benighted heathens don’t have a clue. They’re stuck in the political thinking of a millennium ago. We’re going to have to change all that, if you want your dream of a single galaxy to have a chance.”
“You are mad,” said Garrod.
“No,” said Dema
zze. “Not yet.”
As he spoke, red lights began to blink above all the doorways. A moment later, all the lights in the room went out.
“The Hegemony,” said Demazze quietly in the darkness. “Or perhaps the Meteunese. I never knew which.”
Arekhon felt the tug of eiran coming into place and drawing a pattern tight. Loss and separation, striving and exile …
“Elaeli!” he shouted, but his cry was lost in a deep, rumbling crash of falling stone and metal as the ceiling collapsed.
At Demaizen, the wind began to rise. Kief went to the kitchen window and looked out at the night.
Something about the way the rain dashed against the windows—fitful bursts, fast and hard, followed by a few minutes or seconds of quiet, then the hard dashing rain again—made him edgy and restless. Delath and Serazao didn’t seem to be affected by it; Del was absorbed in skimming the fat off the soup, and ’Zao was half-asleep at the kitchen table, nodding over her mug of uffa.
“Listen,” said Kief. “Did you hear something?”
Del laid aside the spoon. “You check in back. I’ll go around to the front and see if anything’s wrong out there.”
Kief started for the back door—the old servants’ entrance, from the days when the Hall had servants—and stopped again when ’Zao blinked, tilted her head to catch the sound, and said, “No. It came from upstairs.”
She was right. Kief could hear the sound distinctly now: Footsteps—slow, shuffling footsteps—moving along the hallway outside the kitchen. ’Zao, pale and trembling, half-rose from her chair, her eyes lit with sudden hope.
Garrod—thin, haggard, but moving of his own volition, walking—stood in the kitchen door and reached out his hand to support himself on the frame. A bolt of lightning struck nearby, the flash intense, the noise instantaneous. It limned Garrod with an intense blue-white light.
The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Page 31