by Kate Elliott
He was back on the bridge, straining against the straps, broken out in a sweat. She had been watching him. He would swear to it. Only, how could she? It was impossible, of course. It was only a vision induced by the singularity. Wiping his brow, he glanced around the bridge, but neither Branwen nor Florien paid him any mind, and Rachelle, of course, was enveloped by her chair.
A rush of alien words spilled out over the comm. On the screen, Anatoly saw a distant blue-white sun and the graceful red curve of a planet and, closer, winking lights floating in a geometric pattern, marking some kind of station.
“Damn,” said Florien. “The translation program hit the standard loop again. Has Benjamin been playing around with it?”
“I’ll go real-time,” said Branwen. “Signal me when you’ve got it running.” She began to speak in standard Chapalii. Her pronunciation was rough, but the phrases slipped off her tongue easily enough, standard phrases that any human could learn. “This is Hao Branwen Emrys, of the Gray Raven, daiga class ship under the protection of the Tai-en Charles Soerensen. Request coordinates for the next vector.”
The station remained silent for some time. By the time the alien controller replied, Florien had the translator fixed. The voice came out in a tinny monotone.
“Your registration notice is in order. No protocol request has been filed in advance.”
“We are bound for Chapal, under the protection of the Tai-en Charles Soerensen, this journey authorized by the voice of the Tai-en Naroshi Toraokii. Sending clearance code now.”
After another pause, the voice returned. “What road do you request permission to enter?”
“The Mirror Road, bound for Paladia Minor.”
“No,” said Anatoly suddenly. “We want the swiftest road for Chapal.”
Branwen and Florien swiveled around to stare at him. Rachelle, of course, could not, but he heard her mutter something under her breath, and her neck—all that was visible of her—tensed.
“Who countermands the authority of the Tai-en Naroshi Toraokii?”
“I am Anatoly Sakhalin, prince of the Sakhalin tribe. I countermand this order. I am on my way to see the emperor, and I wish to reach him quickly.”
“Merde!” said Florien. “I’m getting a flood of coordinates.”
Branwen hunched down over her screen. “I’ve never seen any of these before. These are nothing like our usual coordinates.”
“We’re being given priority to go through.” Florien’s voice shook.
“Rachelle, are you on it?”
“I’m ready.”
They traded numbers back and forth and the ship moved on, leaving the geometric pattern of lights behind as it arced around the gilded line, as round as a cupped hand, that marked the planet against the heavens.
They broke past the singularity. Anatoly smelled smoke, sharp on a winter’s wind, and then it was gone.
“Fucking bloody hells,” said Rachelle, her voice muffled through the visor. “I’ve never seen this place before.”
“New stream of coordinates coming in,” said Florien. “They didn’t even ask for identification.”
“And he does dishes, too,” said Rachelle.
“All hands,” announced Branwen, keying into the shipboard link, “we’ve got clearance to go forward. We’ll take this next window, but then we’re breaking to check for stress on the hull.”
They took the next window and at once the Chapalii station control fed them a new set of vector coordinates. No one had the slightest idea of where they were, but Branwen set the modeller onto a search program and by the time they’d checked the ship twice and all had a sleepshift and a shower and a meal, she had found three probable locations.
“Based on the maps we have,” she said to the crew, who were gathered in the galley over a breakfast of aebleskiver and fresh raspberry jam, “we’re either way the hell beyond Imperial space or else sitting pretty more than halfway to Chapal.”
“Ship’s chart says it takes about forty Earth days to reach Paladia Minor,” said Anatoly. “By the standard route.”
They all looked at him. “It does,” said Branwen finally. “If there are no delays, which means, where we stand in the queue and how heavy the traffic is that week, and if no other more important ship gets priority.”
“Only now,” said Rachelle, “we’re the ones cutting to the front of the line.”
“Anyway,” added Branwen, giving him that look again, the one they were all giving him, as if he had suddenly turned zayinu in front of their eyes when they thought he had been human all along, “this is clearly not the standard route. No bets now on how long it’s going to take.”
“Twenty days,” said Benjamin. “Bet it cuts the journey in half.” There were no takers.
They reached Chapal three days later. Not the Paladias, which were, according to Branwen and to the navigation charts, the access routes into Chapal. The only access routes, according to what humans knew, their best intelligence gathered by Soerensen’s people and the Gray Raven itself.
They just winked into the system within long range scanning range of Chapal, climbing at a steep rate so that their velocity altered perceptibly as they passed through into the ecliptic. Alarms went off all over the yacht. The steepness of the climb pressed Anatoly deep into the cushion of his crash seat and then, shifting hard, flung him against the straps. Bile rose in his throat, but he kept it down. The others on the bridge—that meant all of them, except for Florien down in the damping bay to keep a close watch on the engine fields—took it in stride, but they were experienced spacers.
Rachelle swore colorfully under her visor. “Cutting it close, aren’t they? What is this—?”
She broke off.
No one spoke.
“Holy Tits,” said Summer. “That’s Chapal. No other planet’s got that porcelain gleam.”
“Lock these files,” said Branwen in a low voice, “and save them with access only to the crew, and to Soerensen.” She glanced back at Anatoly. “And Sakhalin,” she added, as if on an afterthought. She looked wan.
“Do you know how much this information is worth?” said Benjamin on a rising arc.
“Your life,” snapped Branwen. “It shouldn’t be possible to get here that fast.”
Hard on her comment, the comm snapped to life. Chapalii poured out, a stream of words gushing into the sudden silence on the bridge.
“Translation program isn’t picking this up,” said Summer. “It keeps bleeping unreadable.”
“Oh, damn, it must be formal court Chapalii or something,” muttered Branwen. “We’re not allowed to translate that into our primitive tongue. It isn’t seemly.”
The words kept coming, a flood, rising.
“This is Anatoly Sakhalin,” said Anatoly into the air. “Speak Anglais, which is the language I understand.”
The words ceased.
Then, awkwardly, a voice—not filtered through a translation program—spoke in Anglais, vowels clipped and consonants rounded in an alien fashion.
“Prince of the Sakhalin, a transport is sent for you, most honorable.”
“I’ve got incoming,” said Summer at the tracking console. “On screen.”
The ship that flowered into view was no bigger than the Gray Raven, according to the stats that scrolled underneath the screen: estimated volume, mass, length. She was atmosphereworthy, Anatoly was fairly sure, because of her sleek line and trim curves. Otherwise she was fairly ordinary. He unstrapped and rose, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet, but luckily no one was looking. They were all staring at the ship.
“How will I get across to her?” he asked. Three heads snapped around to look at him. Moshe continued to stare at the screen, and Rachelle was still concealed in her chair.
Branwen jumped to her feet. “I’ll take you down. Summer, you’ve got the helm.”
“Gotcha.” Summer shifted to take Branwen’s seat.
They left the bridge.
“I think the best bet would be to have Rac
helle accompany you,” said the captain. “She has the broadest experience of the world. There isn’t much she hasn’t seen, and despite first impressions she can keep her mouth shut at all the best times. You’ll need supplies. It took Charles Soerensen days, waiting in various anterooms, to get in to see the emperor.”
“He will see me at once,” said Anatoly, surprised that she would say such a thing. “I will go alone. I don’t want to argue over this.”
Branwen stopped dead in the passageway and looked him over rather like a young woman examines a prospective lover. “Huh. You are an arrogant bastard, aren’t you?” But she said it kindly, not as an insult. “Okay. I won’t argue, but we only have six months’ worth of supplies, so we can’t wait for you forever. I assume you have the full text of xenology’s precis of Chapalii customs and so on and so forth, so you don’t commit any faux pas—uh, any mistakes, any bad manners.”
“I was brought up under Grandmother Sakhalin’s own tutelage. I trust she has taught me how to behave properly. Begging your pardon, Captain.” Then he thought better of simply ignoring her advice. Like any etsana, she had experience that it behooved him to heed. “But of course it is only wise to take a few supplies, and the demimodeller with the xenology files, in my saddlebags, against necessity.”
She brushed a few stray curls of hair out of her eyes. Laugh lines crinkled up around her eyes when she smiled, and he smiled back, liking her very much. “All right.” She seemed about to say something else, but did not.
At his cabin, she remained discreetly outside while he collected his saddlebags, his saddle, and his saber, and she protested by not one word when he emerged from the cabin carrying them. Diana would have, of course. She was always embarrassed by these vestiges of his former life. They collected supplies and went down to the aft air lock. A dull, shuddering thud shook through the hull as the transport made contact. Anatoly hoisted the saddle onto his shoulder, made a polite farewell, and cycled through the air lock.
A thin tube snaked out on the other side, translucent, so that he almost felt that he was walking on the heavens themselves as he crossed over into the other ship. Stewards waited for him. They took his saddlebags and his saddle and led him to a suite of rooms that were notable mostly for the unsightly orange and pink frieze that circled the antechamber. He took refuge from its splendor in a tiny lounge whose walls were covered with a restful pale gold matting and fitted at one end with an observation bubble. They brought him three liquids in spun crystal cups, all of which were undrinkable, and finally he chased them out and told them to leave him alone until they reached the emperor’s palace.
He watched their descent through the bubble, which was, alas, sealed over once they hit the atmosphere. But he had seen the great porcelain skin that covered fully half of the planet’s surface: The fabled city of the emperor, as large as the great Earth continent of Eurasia. Bored and curious, he set his modeller on his knees and asked it for information on the Imperial city. It knew little enough: Theoretically the civilization of the Chapalii had risen out of the murk of Chapal and eventually learned how to sail the interstellar seas. They had, it was supposed, made a kind of shrine out of the holy ground of their birth, and their home planet had become their emperor’s residence, his palace and his parks, that he alone controlled access to.
The transport set down so gently that Anatoly did not know they had landed until the stewards came to fetch him. He allowed them to carry his saddlebags and saddle because he guessed that they might think less of him for trying to spare them that burden, even if he wanted it for himself. But he refused to let any of them touch his saber, and he tucked the demimodeller into the pouch on his belt, sparing it from prying hands and words.
The ship stood on a riverbank, landing feet splayed out on the sandy bank. A delicate skiff bobbed on the waters, tied up to a pier constructed of spears of ashen wood so slight that he could not believe they could hold his weight. But he knew better than to hesitate. A transparent tube extruded from the ship, leading down the ramp and out to the skiff, where it bubbled out in the stern, a safe, malleable chamber molded to the shape of the boat. He walked out onto the pier, and a steward in silver livery helped him to a seat on the skiff, in the stern. Belatedly, he recalled that silver livery was the mark of the emperor. He kept his expression impassive as the transport’s stewards swung his saddle and saddlebags onto the boat and the tube pinched closed around him, sealing him into an oval bubble. Another silver-clad Chapalii poled them away from the pier and they were off, caught at once in a swift current, pulled downstream.
On the horizon he saw towers, and beyond them, the pale glow of the city, bright even against the bright light of the Chapaliian sun. He reached out and touched the skin of the mobile chamber. It gave beneath his touch, cool, not sticky, molding around his fingers as he pushed outward, stretching with his thrust and shrinking back in as he withdrew his hand. It felt as innocuous as skin and as strong as silk, as tough as boiled leather.
He sat in silence for a long while. No one steered the skiff, which plunged along, barely rocking in the waters, down a deep channel. The boat seemed poured out of one mold of a translucent pink material shot through with a substrate pattern of hexagrams and five-pointed stars, light shifting through them as the vessel skimmed over the ever-changing waters. Finally, because neither of the two stewards attending him spoke, he did.
“How soon will I reach the emperor?”
Both stewards stood and bowed, a remarkable feat of balance on the moving skiff. “Most honorable and most high, this vessel approaches the Yaochalii’s seat of honor. To the unmoving throne at the center of the universe you are being conveyed.”
“You are the Yaochalii’s attendants?”
The steward on the right flushed a deep red, which meant, Anatoly recalled, that he was pleased or flattered. “I am Cha Kato-ra, Chamberlain of Swift-Current Boats, and this is my cousin, Cha Tona-ra, Chamberlain of the Linked Circles of Breath. We are only attendants to the great park at whose center lies the lake of mirrors where sits the unmoving throne. You honor us by your notice, most high.”
Cha Tona bowed in his turn. “Most honorable and most high, it is the craftsmen of my house who have been granted the privilege of crafting this—” The slightest hesitation. Cha Tona flushed blue up the line of his jaw, and then recovered himself. “—this membrane, whose substance will allow you to enter the presence of the emperor.”
Anatoly laid a palm flat against the bubble. A sudden, uncomfortable tingling invaded his hand, as if the skin of the bubble was trying to sink into his skin. He jerked his hand back, startled. “Please explain this process to me,” he said, wondering if the bubble somehow protected the emperor from him, like a shield covering potential enemies.
“Your anatomical construction does not allow you, most honorable Yao-en, to breathe the air on our planet. This membrane permeates your molecular structure and creates a barrier which then synthesizes from those elements you draw in the proper intake of oxygen and outflow of carbon dioxide and waste products which suffice daiga in their primitive breathing mechanisms.”
“If I do not accept this, ah, membrane?”
Mortified, both lords—for in fact they were by grant of title lords and not stewards—flushed violet. “Most munificent and generous Yao-en, without this kukiwa you cannot appear before the emperor.”
“Did the Tai-en Charles Soerensen accept one of these membranes?”
The question produced silence. Cha Tona placed one pale hand carefully on the side of the skiff, as if he was communicating with it. Off to the right, a massive mountain of obsidian breached the ivory shell to the city, its jet bulk wreathed with carnelian and jade towers, as slender as wands.
“Yao-en.” Cha Tona crossed both hands on his chest and inclined his body in a one-quarter bow. “The Tai-en Charles Soerensen did not appear before the emperor.”
“Yes, he did.”
“I beg a thousand pardons for disputing your words, most ho
norable, most exalted. The Emperor appeared before the Tai-en Charles Soerensen in the Hall of Dukes, as is the Yaochalii’s custom, but it is not his exalted flesh which appears there, but only his form.”
Anatoly digested this news in silence as they skimmed onward. Waves spilled once over the prow as they took a sharp dip through a flurry of rapids, and were then sucked away through the boat to vanish, leaving not one drop of water behind. Charles Soerensen thought he had seen the emperor, and he had, in a way, but only an image of him, like a nesh image, Anatoly supposed. But not even Charles Soerensen had met the emperor in the flesh, as the actors always liked to say.
“I accept the membrane,” said Anatoly.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the bubble shrank around him, shrank until it hugged him and shrank further, dissolving through his clothes until he felt it like fire along his skin and stretching in through his lips and nostrils and ears and eyes to invade his whole body.
At that instant he realized he had fallen into a trap. He took in a breath, to lunge, to draw his saber and at least take them with him, but he could not breathe nor could he move, as if the dissolution of the membrane into his skin had paralyzed him. Why had he trusted them so blithely? Why had he believed that the name of Sakhalin would protect him wherever he went? What an arrogant, stupid fool.
He sagged forward, caught himself with his hands on his knees, and pushed up to sit, panting. Water flashed under the light of twin suns; he hadn’t noticed the other one before. The bubble had shadowed it. One of the suns was a great, glaring thing, angry and red; the other was small, hot, and bright, with the blue trembling of flame inside it. He sat in the open air, the breeze on his face and the bitter tang of alien water on his lips, spray from the river. The two lords sat in pale splendor, each with his hands in his lap, fingers folded together in complicated patterns that reminded Anatoly all at once of the complicated braid in Rachelle’s hair, made beautiful because of its suggestion of layers and sweep.