Celestial Matters

by Garfinkle, Richard

  At the top of the hill we found Anaxamander talking to a yawning, angry Kleon.

  “Caught again, Captain Yellow Hare?” the security chief said. “What would the Spartan war college have to say?”

  Yellow Hare looked over at me, forcing Anaxamander to follow her gaze.

  “We came to prevent you from launching the net,” I said.

  “Admission of treason, excellent,” Anaxamander said. He gazed up at the sun and spread his arms wide as if to grasp that wall of flame and draw it into himself. But I saw as he obviously did not that ’Elios was poised to spear him.

  “You fool,” I said. “Mihradarius is the traitor.”

  “Mihradarius? Sunthief is his crowning glory.”

  “Sunthief is my crowning folly!” I said. “I bear the responsibility for it. I will answer to the Archons and the gods for its results. But it is not too late for you, Anaxamander. If you launch the net Chandra’s Tear will shatter, and you will go down in history as Anaxamander the Simpleton. Comedies will be written about your foolishness, and no father will ever name a son Anaxamander again. But if you release us and turn this ship around for Earth, you will be its savior and paeans of praise will be sung to you for preventing Aias’s folly.”

  “Do not seek to save yourself with these useless lies,” Anaxamander said. “You will stay here and witness the failure of your treason.”

  “Aias?” Kleon said. “Is it true?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The ship will be destroyed.”

  “Silence!” Anaxamander shouted. He drew his sword and held it to Kleon’s back. “You will pilot this ship,” he said, and with his free hand he shoved the frightened navigator toward the tower.

  Mihradarius watched them go. Then he turned to stare at the statue of Alexander, and mouthed the name of the Zoroastrian Adversary, “Ahriman.”

  That single word revealed to me in a flash of clarity why he was doing this, showed me the fanatic who had been hiding for years under the mask of Athenian propriety and using his native genius to rise to a high enough place from which to strike. I leaped for him, but four guards grabbed me. “Stop him!” I shouted. “I order you to stop him!” But they were unmoved.

  Mihradarius waved to me and walked down the hill toward the sun net. I struggled against the guards but they held me fast.

  Six moon sleds specially equipped with thirty-foot-long poles of fire-gold took off from the stern of Chandra’s Tear, flying sunward. The sleds lined themselves up in two columns like an honor guard, poles pointed inward, creating a corridor of rarefied air that joined my ship to the sun. The golden light glared even brighter, and ’Elios raised his spear to cast it through that lane.

  There was a muffled whoosh and two long strands of celestial rope shot out from the net cannon, laced together by thick terrestrial cable. The ropes followed the corridor of air straight and sure toward the sun. The lines reached out like two spreading claws, then pulled inward, striking through the fire into the sun. Their terrestrial components flared away into nothingness, but the indestructible celestial matter plunged through the heart of ’Elios. But the sun god did not scream; instead, he drew back his arm to throw the spear of retribution.

  Their mission accomplished, the sleds darted back toward the supposed safety of my doomed ship.

  A minute passed as the four-mile-long claws spun themselves into a net, twirled through the guts of ’Elios, and arced out, dragging a half-mile-wide sphere of Olympian fire. For a moment there was a hole in the sun; then the remaining flame flowed back to heal the gash.

  The net and its cargo twirled in space, the multitude of motions adding together into an angry dance. First it pulled away, then it doubled back and flew over Chandra’s Tear, scorching our marble rooftops from a mile up. As the fireball was about to turn again, the trolley was released along its track, pulling the sun fragment into a sedate orbit around our moon fragment.

  For one brief moment everything was going as I had originally conceived of it, and I dared to hope that despite all that had happened Sunthief might yet succeed. For that hope I ask the forgiveness of ’Elios.

  Then the god let his javelin fly. The ball of fire ceased its natural orbit; it turned in midair and flew straight away from the stern of the ship, nearly pulling the trolley out of its tracks.

  Chandra’s Tear bucked; her aft end was pulled upward toward the sun by the confused motions of the net and the fragment. The force threw us over on our backs as the fragment made anther pass overhead, pulling the ship around and about. The ball of celestial flame was a wild horse, dragging my ship like a hapless chariot that had been foolishly yoked to a steed untamable.

  λ

  The sun fragment twirled across the fire-painted sky like a bull dancer in a ring. Chandra’s Tear flew after it, pulled helplessly toward blazing oblivion as the ball of celestial flame tried to reunite with ’Elios. The guards, unprepared for the sudden shock of unexpected movement, tumbled into a heap at the base of Alexander’s statue. No longer constrained to stand under the weapons of the soldiers, I ducked down and rolled across the shaking hill until I reached the circle of couches. Ramonojon and Yellow Hare followed my example. My bodyguard and I slid under one couch and huddled together clutching the hot marble legs. Ramonojon dove under the next couch and copied our actions.

  In the crimson sky ahead of us, the fireball made a sudden turn downward, twirling Chandra’s Tear about its central axis until our bow pointed upward. The pointed tip of my teardrop ship became a spearpoint aimed at the heart of the sun, while her broad, arced stern looked down through the spheres, down toward the tiny dot of Earth that lay at the center of the universe, tugging inexorably at our terrestrial bodies, calling us home. A score of crewmen who had assembled at the trolley to watch the triumph of Sunthief heeded that call and fell screaming off the ship. The lucky ones flew into the sun fragment and burned up instantly; the rest tumbled helplessly through space down the eighty-thousand-mile stretch of emptiness that lay between the spheres of ’Elios and Aphrodite.

  The fragment made a right angle turn to port, violating all the laws of celestial motion. The impossible motion pulled Chandra’s Tear toward the blade-thin edge of the crystal sphere that held ’Elios in his orbit. I offered what I was sure would be a final prayer for forgiveness to the sun god as my ship hurtled toward the celestial knife of sacrifice.

  Then the sky grew sharp and bright as two lines of gold spears appeared across our bow, thrusting out into space: the secondary and tertiary impellers. Kleon’s voice echoed through the ship. “Brace for speed.”

  “Daidalos bless you, Kleon,” I whispered.

  A moment later, Kleon deployed the port ballast and starboard lift balls; the ship rolled onto its side, so that instead of our stern, our broad-bottomed keel faced the sphere’s edge. There was a jarring scrape, and a noise like chalk on slate reverberated through the underside of the ship. Shards of moon rock were carved away from our bottom as we turned away from the edge of indestructible crystal and began to fly sideways toward the sun, fleeing Skylla to be caught by Kharybdis.

  But Kleon had not saved us from one death to commit us to another. He retracted the starboard phalanx of impellers, trying to pull us away from ’Elios and face us toward the inner spheres. But the sun fragment turned again; now leaping upward toward the stars, it pulled us stern first past the sun and through the gap in the crystal sphere.

  More gold appeared on the bow as Kleon deployed the primary impellers, trying to oppose the force of the fragment and pull the ship back down toward Earth. Drawn upward by the fragment and down by Kleon, my ship screamed like a man being torn apart by wild horses. Chandra’s Tear sang out her agony, chorusing the Pythagorean chord of the moon, the high unwavering howl of a terrified child torn from its mother.

  The scream shook the ground like the wrath of Poseidon, bringing forth a wave that ripped like an earthquake from fore to aft across Chandra’s Tear. The quake shook the navigation tower, splintered what was left o
f the amphitheater, then shattered barracks and dormitories and cannonades as it passed sternward.

  “Hold on!” I shouted as the wave came up the fore end of the hill, but whether I was warning Yellow Hare, Ramonojon, or myself, I could not say.

  The shaking moon rock exploded the colonnade as if the marble columns were hot glass suddenly immersed in freezing water. A cloud of marble dust rose up, crowning the brow of the hill in a fog of stone chips. Then the harmonic reached the circle of couches. The solid marble legs took in the shock and transmitted it to my body. My hands lost their purchase, and I tumbled away toward the front of the hill, clutching to no avail at the angry smoothness of the ground.

  But a strong hand grabbed my left wrist and yanked me backward. I could feel a tracery of scars in the palm that held me in an iron grip. It pulled me up and helped me grasp again the legs of the couch.

  “I have you,” Yellow Hare said into my ear. I wiped the dust from my goggles, then blinked to clear away the stinging pain of the light. I saw a wavering movement out of the corner of my eye, and shouted, “Run!” to Ramonojon.

  He scrambled out from under his sanctuary just as the statue of Aristotle toppled from its pedestal, smashing down on the marble couch. The scholar’s statue broke into a dozen pieces; his head splintered into dust. The little globe model of the universe he had so proudly carried flew off into space, freed from its terrestrial constraints. But his left shoulder and right leg hit Ramonojon from behind. My poor friend collapsed under the weight, screaming, his arm pinned under Aristotle’s shoulder.

  “Stay here!” Yellow Hare said as she ducked from our place of safety.

  “No!” I followed her onto the rocking ground. Yellow Hare ran forward, keeping her footing despite the random tilting of the ship. Knowing I could never match her agile gait, I crawled after her across the few feet that separated me from where Ramonojon lay pinned, howling in inarticulate pain.

  Yellow Hare knelt down beside Ramonojon, bracing herself between Aristotle’s errant leg and torso.

  “Take hold of him,” she said as I arrived. “I’ll move the statue.”

  Ramonojon was breathing raggedly. His trapped arm was bent in ways it had never been meant to turn. I reached around his waist and leaned back, ready to pull. Then Yellow Hare heaved the stone, rolling the old scholar’s remnants off the hill.

  I pulled Ramonojon out, and he cried out again, his voice mingling with the ship’s harmonic keening. As if in answer to the screams of its creator, Chandra’s Tear howled a deep note of suffering, then spun around again, pulling our fore end downward to the sun. The three of us tumbled backward. Yellow Hare grabbed hold of a couch leg and pulled Ramonojon and me to safety.

  The line of gold on our fore end dimmed and I realized that Kleon had angled the impellers down toward the underside of the ship, turning the ship upside down. An inverted eagle, we swooped upward, climbing once again away from the sun. It seemed that Ikaros’s fate was not to be ours.

  But that last abrupt maneuver was too much for my poor ship. The scream of Chandra’s Tear rose to an agonized pitch. The surface of the ship split at the fore end of the hill. And through the spreading crack, I saw the storage cavern below. I saw Clovix run beneath the fracture, pushing his underlings out of the way. For one brief second he met my eyes and I felt his spirit reaching out, imploring me to do something. Then the crack widened and Clovix ran aft to escape the swiftly spinning shards of moon rock.

  The ship climbed away from the sun, the impellers straining against the natural pull of the sun fragment. And as we rose the crack grew wider and wider, deeper and deeper. Then Kleon turned to port, trying to right us, and Chandra’s Tear, my ship, my home, broke in twain, singing out its death song, one pure clear note more beautiful than any mortal poet could pluck from a lyre, a paean so sad that only blessed Orpheus or Apollo of the musicians could have sung it.

  The aft end to which we three clung tightly was jerked upward by the sun fragment, while the fore end with the navigation tower leaped away from us, orbiting in a wild spiral. Half of the impellers snapped off, leaving that broken triangle of moonstone helpless to control its flight. It tumbled wildly through a mass of partially rarefied air until the sharp half of the silver tear fell blackened into the sun.

  “Kleon,” I screamed, but for once that poor brilliant navigator could not save his ship. The fore end of Chandra’s Tear flew downward through the great light of heaven; the impellers vanished as the celestial fire consumed them; then the navigation tower exploded from the heat, taking the life of the greatest pilot ever to fly through the heavens. May his soul be well received by the judges of the dead, and his Pythagorean purity grant him a good life beyond life.

  A minute later the forward half of Chandra’s Tear emerged from the body of ’Elios, a perfect triangle of moonstone, seemingly untouched by the flames. All things terrestrial had been burned away and there was no sign that humans had ever lived on it.

  O, ye gods, ye all-knowing Fates, tell me, did so many men have to die for your purposes to be accomplished? No, forgive my plaint. The lives of my crew were spun out and cut short; that I must accept. Permit me to continue speaking that the gallant dead who died in those fires will be properly remembered in song and thought.

  When the last man had fallen I heard a gurgling sound from within the remaining half of the ship. At the ragged fore edge of the hill, a waterfall had formed. The reservoir water poured out into the sun, trying futilely to extinguish that divine fire. Crates of stores tumbled out, followed by farmers from the spon-gen labs, filling the air with the screams of beast and man.

  Pulled by the drunken flight of the sun fragment, the aft end of the ship spun in wild circles. The waterfall became a twisting helix, spilling the lifeblood of my dying ship into empty space. Yellow Hare, Ramonojon, and I clung to one another and the still-rooted couch. My muscles strained against the unfamiliar pain, but Yellow Hare held me tight.

  Then, as the fragment was turning to pull us upward again, the trolley jammed in its tracks, and the fireball, unable to orbit us and following whatever impossible dictates of motion were constraining it, took up a straight-line flight, dragging us up away from ’Elios faster than Chandra’s Tear had ever flown.

  As the ship skipped across open space like a moon sled through the air, Yellow Hare pulled Ramonojon and me out of our place of safety.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled, clutching the leg of the couch.

  “We have to reach the brig,” she shouted over the rushing air. “It’s the only safe place.”

  Yellow Hare and I crawled aft across the hilltop, pulling Ramonojon after us. We managed, the gods alone know how, to roll down over the side into the brig tunnel with only a few bruises and abrasions. Ramonojon’s arm was black and blue and bleeding. His eyes watered and there was blood on his lips, as if he’d bitten his tongue.

  Yellow Hare in the lead, we crawled down the steps of that narrow passageway until we reached the cell without a door. The ship spun again and I was slammed up against the ceiling and then back to the floor, but I managed to stay conscious and tie myself to the starboard wall with the long leather securing straps. Ramonojon fainted as Yellow Hare lashed him in to the aft wall before securing herself to the port side. She kept up her calm Spartan exterior, but I could see her grit her teeth against the cuts and bruises on her body, and lean on her left leg because she had somehow injured her right.

  Tied to the walls, we were carried along through that whirlwind ride. Direction lost any meaning as the ship twirled through space. My ears rang, and I screamed in pain as we spun and spun and spun. I do not know when I blacked out, but I thank the gods most humbly for granting me that respite of oblivion.

  * * *

  I lurched forward onto twisted leather straps and choked myself awake. The ship had stopped moving. At first I wondered if this strange stillness was a momentary respite amid the wild careering of sun fragment and moon fragment, so I hung there on the wall for a
time, waiting for the next turn or pull; but no new motion occurred.

  “I think it’s safe to remove the straps,” I said to Yellow Hare, who had just shaken herself back to consciousness.

  She nodded and untied herself. My restraints had become knotted during the flight and she had to cut me down. I came down off the wall and tested the feel of the ground with my feet. There was a slight aftward tilt in the angle of the ship, as if whatever was holding us steady had altered the normal direction of down a few degrees.

  Ramonojon, unconscious and delirious from the pain in his broken arm, also needed assistance to be freed. Yellow Hare picked up Ramonojon’s unresisting body and carried him up the stairs; she looked very haggard, and leaned heavily on her left leg as she negotiated the steps with her moaning burden. I followed her, but slowly. My head spun with dizziness, my stomach had the hollow feeling that comes after a long fast, and each muscle in my body ached with a signature pain that made me feel every movement I took.

  The steel door at the top of the brig tunnel had been crumpled downward during the flight, embedding itself halfway into the ground, and Yellow Hare had to force her way through the opening on top and then drag Ramonojon and me after her.

  We emerged onto a bleak silver landscape. All the buildings, columns, and statues that had lined the hill had been stripped away during our wild flight. The port and starboard cannon batteries were crushed into lumps of iron. But, through the hillocks of the laboratory warren, I could see that the rear cannon battery looked remarkably intact.

  I took a deep breath of fresh air and the dizziness and nausea vanished. I still felt the aches and pains of bruised muscles, but they no longer concerned me. My mind began to fill with one pure question: Where were we?

  I breathed in more and that query became the only idea in my head. I had to know the answer; nothing else mattered. I looked around, seeking understanding. To port I saw a dull yellow glow, like a distant lantern seen on a faraway hilltop at night. I knew immediately that it was ’Elios and that we had flown a long long way from him.