Exultant

by Stephen Baxter

  The panel conferred again. It seemed some bargain was done. The judges did not dispute Nilis’s right to appeal. They would not allow Pirius Blue, as prime perpetrator of this anti-Doctrinal lapse, to escape the sentence passed down, but as a gesture of leniency they placed Pirius Red, the younger copy, in Nilis’s care.

  Nilis got up one more time, to make a final, angry denunciation of the court. “For the record let me say that this shameful charade is in microcosm a demonstration of why we will never win this war. I refer not only to your sclerotic decision-making processes, and the lethality of your interagency rivalry, but also to the simple truth of this case: that a man who defeated a Xeelee is not lauded as a hero but prosecuted and brought down… .”

  It was stirring stuff. But the automated monitor was the only witness; the court was already emptying.

  Pirius stood, bewildered. He saw faces turned to him, Torec, Captain Seath, even Pirius Blue, his older self, but they seemed remote, unreadable, as if they were blurred. So that was that, it seemed, Pirius’s life trashed and taken away from him in a summary judgment, for a “crime” he hadn’t even had the chance to commit.

  He shouted down at Pirius Blue, “This is all your fault.”

  Pirius Blue looked up from his lower tier and laughed bleakly. “Well, maybe so. But how do you think I feel? Do you know what’s the worst thing of all? That mission, my mission, is never even going to happen.”

  Then he was led away. Pirius Red didn’t expect to see him again.

  Here was the broad, crumpled face of Nilis, like a moon hovering before him. “Ensign? Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem real. Sir, I don’t want to be placed under your supervision. I only want to do my duty.”

  Nilis’s expression softened. “And you think that if I pull you back from the Front, that pit of endless death, I’ll be stopping you from doing that? You think your duty is only to die, as so many others have before you?” The old man’s eyes were watery, as if he was about to cry. “Believe me,” Nilis said, “with me you will fulfill your duty—not by dying, but by living. And by helping me fulfill my vision. For I, alone of all the fools and stuffed shirts in this room, I have a dream.”

  “A dream?”

  Nilis bent close and whispered. “A dream of how this war may be won.” He smiled. “We leave tomorrow, Ensign; be ready at reveille.”

  “Leave? Sir—where are we going?”

  Nilis seemed surprised at the question. “Earth, of course!” And he walked away, his soiled black robe flapping at his heels.

  Chapter 6

  Nilis’s corvette was a sleek arrow shape nuzzled against a port, one of a dozen strung along this busy Officer Country gangway.

  Captain Seath herself escorted Pirius Red to the corvette. They were the first to get here; they had to wait for Nilis.

  Pirius wasn’t sure why Seath had brought him here herself. It wasn’t as if he had any personal effects to be carried; he had been issued a fancy new uniform for the trip, and anything else he needed would be provided by the corvette’s systems, and it would never have occurred to him to take such a thing as a souvenir. Officially, she said, Seath was here to make sure Pirius “didn’t screw up again.” Pirius thought he detected something else, though, something softer under Seath’s scarred gruffness. Pity, perhaps? Or maybe regret; maybe Seath, as his commander, thought she could have done more to protect him from this fate.

  Whatever. Seath wasn’t a woman you discussed emotions with.

  He studied the corvette. It was a Navy ship, and it bore the tetrahedral sigil of free mankind, the most ancient symbol of the Expansion. He said, “Sir—a Navy ship? But I’m in the charge of Commissary Nilis now.”

  She laughed humorlessly. “The Commission doesn’t run starships, Ensign. You think the Navy is about to give its most ancient foe access to FTL technology?”

  “The Xeelee are the foe.”

  “Oh, the Navy and Commission were at war long before anybody heard of the Xeelee.” It was disturbing to hear a straight-up-and-down officer like Seath talk like this.

  There was a reluctant footstep behind them. To Pirius’s surprise, here came Torec. She was as empty-handed as Pirius was but, like him, she wore a smart new uniform. A complex expression closed up her face, and her full lips were pushed forward into a pout that looked childish, Pirius thought.

  “You’re late,” Seath snapped.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Pirius said, “Come to say good-bye?” He felt touched but he wasn’t about to show it.

  “No.”

  “Pirius, she’s going with you,” Seath said.

  “What?”

  Torec spat, “Not my idea, dork-face.”

  Commissary Nilis came bustling along the corridor. Unlike the two ensigns he did bring some luggage, a couple of trunks and two antique-looking bots which floated after him. “Late, late; here I am about to cross the Galaxy and I’m late for the very first step… .” He slowed, panting. “Captain Seath. Thank you for hosting me, thank you for everything.” He beamed at Pirius. “Ready for your new adventure, Ensign?” Then Nilis noticed Torec. “Who’s this? A friend to wave you off?”

  “Not exactly,” Seath said. “This is Ensign Torec. Same cadre as Pirius, same generation. Not as bright, though.”

  Torec raised her eyebrows, and Pirius looked away.

  “And why is she here?”

  “Commissary, I’ve assigned her to you.”

  Nilis blustered, “Why, I’ve no desire to take another of your child soldiers. The corvette isn’t provisioned for an extra mouth—”

  “I’ve seen to that.”

  “Captain, I’ve no use for this girl.”

  “She’s not for you. She’s for Pirius.”

  “Pirius?”

  Seath’s face was hard, disrespectful. “Commissary, take my advice. You’re taking this ensign out of here, away from everything he knows, dragging him across the Galaxy to a place he can’t possibly even imagine.” She spoke as if Pirius wasn’t there.

  Nilis’s mouth assumed a round O of shock, an expression that was becoming familiar to Pirius. “I see what you mean. But this base is so”—he gestured—“inhuman. Cold. Lifeless. The only green to be seen anywhere is the paintwork of warships!”

  “And so you imagined our soldiers to be inhuman, too.”

  “Perhaps I did.”

  Seath said, “We’re fighting a war; we can’t afford comfort. But these children need warmth, humanity. And they turn to each other to find it.”

  Pirius’s cheeks were burning. “So you knew about me and Torec the whole time, sir.”

  Seath didn’t respond; she kept her eyes on the Commissary.

  Nilis seemed embarrassed too. “I bow to your wisdom, Captain.” He turned his avuncular gaze on Torec. “A friend of Pirius is a friend of mine. And I’m sure we’ll find you something gainful to do.”

  Torec stared back at him. For the ensigns, this was an utterly alien way to be spoken to. Torec turned to Seath. “Captain—”

  “I know,” Seath said. “You spent your whole life trying to get to officer training. You made it, and now this. Well, the Commissary here assures me that by going with him, Pirius will fulfill his duty in a manner that might even change the course of the war. Though I can’t imagine how,” she added coldly. “But if that’s true, your duty is clear, Ensign Torec.”

  “Sir?”

  “To keep Pirius sane. No discussion,” Seath added with soft menace.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nilis bustled forward, hands fluttering. “Well, if that’s settled—come, come, we must get on.” He led the way through the open port into the ship.

  Captain Seath stared at the ensigns for one last second, then turned away.

  Pirius and Torec followed Nilis aboard the corvette. Sullenly, they avoided each other’s eyes.

  They had both been aboard Navy vessels before, of course—transports, ships of the line—for training p
urposes. But they had never been aboard a ship as plush as this before. And it was clean. It even smelled clean.

  In the corridor that ran along the ship’s elegant spine, there was carpet on the floor. A two-person crew worked in the tip of the needle hull, beyond a closed bulkhead. In the central habitable section, the outer hull was transparent, and if you looked into the sections beyond the rear bulkhead you could see the misty shapes of engines. But two compartments were enclosed by opaque walls.

  Nilis ushered his hovering cases into one of these cabins. He looked uncertainly at the ensigns, then opened the door of the other opaqued compartment. “This cabin was for you, Pirius. I suppose it will have to do for the two of you.” There was only one bed. “Well,” he said gruffly. “I’ll leave you to sort it out.” And, absurdly embarrassed, he bustled into his own cabin and shut the door.

  In the cabin there was more carpet on the floor. The room was dominated by the bed, at least twice as wide as the bunks they had been used to. Pirius glimpsed uniforms in a wardrobe, and bowls of some kind of food, brightly colored, sat on a small table.

  They faced each other.

  “I didn’t ask to be here,” said Torec. She sounded furious.

  “I didn’t ask for you.”

  “I’ve better things to do than to be your squeeze.”

  Pirius snapped, “I’d rather squeeze that fat old Commissary.”

  “Maybe that’s what he wants.”

  They held each other’s gazes for a second. Then, together, they burst out laughing.

  Torec crammed a handful of the food into her mouth. “Mm-m. These are sweet.”

  “I bet the bed’s soft.”

  Still laughing, they ran at each other and began to tear off their clothes. Their new uniforms were not like the rough coveralls they had been used to on Arches; officer-class, the uniforms crawled off the floor where they had been carelessly dropped, slithered into the wardrobe, and began a silent process of self-cleaning and repair.

  The room had everything they needed: food, water, clean-cloths, even a lavatory artfully concealed behind paneling. “Evidently officers and Commissaries don’t like to admit they shit,” Torec said dryly when they discovered this.

  For hours they just stayed in the room, under the covers or on top of them, eating and drinking as much as they could. They knew they had to make the most of this. Soon enough, somebody would come for them and take all this stuff away; somebody always did.

  But nobody did come.

  “How long do you think it will take to get there?”

  Pirius was cradling her head on his arm, and eating tiny purple sweets from her bare belly. “Where?”

  “Earth.”

  He thought about that. Even now, more than twenty millennia since humanity’s first interstellar jaunt, a trip across the face of the Galaxy was not a trivial undertaking. “Earth is twenty-eight thousand light-years from the center.” Everybody knew that. “FTL can hit two hundred light-years an hour. So …”

  Torec had always been fast at arithmetic. “About six days?”

  “But we can’t get so far without resupply, not a ship this size. Double the time for stops?”

  She stroked the center line of his chest. “What do you think it will be like?”

  “Earth? I have no idea.” It was true. To Navy brats like Pirius and Torec, Earth was a name, a remote ideal—it was what they were fighting for. But they had never been told anything about Earth itself. What would be the point? None of them was ever going to go there. Earth was a totem. You didn’t think of it as a place to live.

  “So what does Nilis want you to do?”

  “Win the war.” He laughed. “He doesn’t tell me anything.”

  “Maybe the Commissary is working out a training program for us.”

  “Yes, maybe that.” It was a comforting thought. They were used to having every waking second programmed by somebody else. Everybody moaned about the regime the whole time, of course, but Pirius admitted to himself it would be reassuring when they heard a brisk knock on the door and the Commissary issued them their orders.

  But twenty-four hours went by, and still they heard no such knock.

  They began to grow uncomfortable. It was hard even to sleep. They weren’t used to being enclosed, isolated like this. Back at Arches, where they had grown up, they had spent their whole lives in vast open dormitories, like the ones in the Barracks Ball, places where you could always see thousands of others arrayed around you, eating, sleeping, playing, fighting, bitching. Again everybody complained, and snatched bits of privacy under the covers of their bunks. But the fact was, it was reassuring to be cocooned in a vast array of humanity—to have your little slot, and to fill it. Now they had been ripped out of all that, and it was disquieting.

  Already Pirius could see Captain Seath’s wisdom. If not for the presence of Torec, somebody he could share all this with, he probably would go crazy. The two of them clung to each other for reassurance. But it wasn’t enough.

  At the end of that first twenty-four hours they felt a soft judder—probably a docking, causing a ripple in the corvette’s inertial field as it interfaced with a port’s systems. They surely couldn’t be at Earth yet, but they were somewhere.

  They jumped out of their tousled bed, pulled on uniforms, and hurried out of their cabin, leaving it for the first time since Arches.

  Through the transparent hull they saw a plain of metal that softly curved away, like a plated-over moon. The corvette had nuzzled against a dock on this metallic worldlet, and to left and right they could see more ports, receding beyond the metal world’s tight horizon, complex puckers within which more ships rested.

  There was no sign of the corvette’s crew. But Commissary Nilis stood here, gazing out. He hadn’t noticed the ensigns. He had his hands behind his back, and he seemed to be humming.

  Torec and Pirius glanced at each other. Pirius stood to attention and plucked up his courage. “Sir.”

  Nilis was startled, but he smiled. “Ah, my two ensigns! And how are you enjoying the trip? Well, we’ve barely started. If there’s anything you need, just ask.” He turned back to the window. “Look over there—remarkable—I think that’s a Spline ship.” So it was, Pirius saw. The great living vessel nestled in its dock; it looked like a bulging eyeball.

  Torec nudged Pirius, who asked, “Sir—Commissary—can you tell us where we are?”

  “Well, this is Base 528, I believe,” Nilis said. “We’re here for our first provisioning stop.” He glanced at them. “And what does that number tell you?”

  Pirius was confused, but Torec said: “Sir, that it’s an old base. Arches is 2594. The older the base, the lower the number.”

  “Quite so. Good. Now, come, see.” He walked past them to the other wall.

  Pirius saw ships: many ships, of all shapes and sizes, crisscrossing before his vision. The nearer ships shuttled into docks, or left them. Beyond there were many more, just sparks too remote to make out any detail, a shifting crowd that sorted itself into streams that swept away. The ships were beyond counting, he thought, stunned, and this vast streaming must continue day and night, all from this one base.

  But Torec was looking beyond the ships to the stars. “Pirius. The sky is dark.”

  The sky was dense with stars, many of them hot and blue. But in every direction he looked, between the stars the sky was black, black as velvet. “We aren’t in the Galaxy center anymore,” he said.

  “Quite right,” Nilis said. “We are actually in a spiral arm—called the Three-Kiloparsec Arm, the innermost arm of the Galaxy’s main disc.”

  “Three-Kilo,” said Torec, wondering. “I heard of that.”

  “Many famous battles were fought here,” Nilis said. “But long ago. Once this base was on the front line. Now it is a resupply depot. The Front has since been pushed deeper into the heart of the Galaxy, deeper toward the Prime Radiant itself. In this part of the Galaxy there are ports, dry docks, graving yards, weapons ships: it is a
belt of factory worlds that encloses the inner center, a hinterland that spans hundreds of light-years.” He sighed. “I’ve traveled here a dozen times, but the scale of it still bewilders me. But then, a war spread across a hundred thousand light-years, and spanning tens of millennia, simply cannot be grasped during a human life spanning mere decades. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that the idea of winning this war is beyond the imagination of even our most senior commanders.”

  Torec said hesitantly, “Commissary?”

  “Yes, child?”

  “Please—what do you want us to do?”

  Nilis laughed. “Why, nothing. You must relax—treat this as a holiday, for believe me, we will have plenty to do once we get to Earth.” He slapped them on their shoulders. “For now, just enjoy the ride!” And he disappeared into his cabin.

  Pirius and Torec shared a bewildered glance. For Navy brats, leisure was an alien concept. They stared out at the streaming ships.

  The next leg of the journey would be the longest, a straight-line cut through the spiral arms of the Galaxy spanning six days and no less than fifteen thousand light-years, before they reached a resupply depot at the Orion Line.

  In the humming womb of the corvette, Pirius and Torec still had nothing to do.

  By the end of the second day the rich food began to make them feel bloated. There was always sex, of course, but even the appeal of that faded. Pirius came to suspect uneasily that the fact they could screw as much as they liked here took away a lot of the appeal of their under-the-blanket barracks fumbles.

  In quiet moments on the third day, Pirius tried to analyze his feelings for Torec.

  Obviously Seath had assumed they were a stable couple, that their relationship was strong. But the truth was that Torec had only ever been a buddy. For now she was his favored squeeze, and vice versa, but that might have changed overnight, without hard feelings or regrets. In the Barracks Ball, there was a lot of choice, and a lot of bunk-hopping. Sex was all about athletics, and a bit of comfort. Surely they weren’t in love. Were they doomed to spend their lives together even so?