When Ares rose across the bow of our new ship trailing the sun fragment behind it, I left Yellow Hare to go to my control cabin while she joined the rest of the crew in the brig cells, the safest place for them to be during the flight. Yellow Hare protested at being separated, but I pointed out that there was nothing she could do to help me if some piloting disaster occurred, but she might be of help to those down below in case any of them were injured during the flight.
In my cabin, I leaned back against the hard wooden wall and strapped myself to the carpeted floor with long cords of twisted hide wrapped in spun cotton. The leather handgrips of the five pull ropes dangled down in front of my face. The port and up reins were to my left, starboard, and down to my right, and Ramonojon’s gift, the emergency rein, hung directly before my eyes.
I waited for Ares to turn and pull Rebuke of the Phoenix toward the inner side of the war god’s crystal sphere, so that we would not have to negotiate our way through the whole gear work of epicycles.
The red glare of Ares faded as he set under us, spinning eccentrically downward; then he rose again to port, pulling us after him. I tightened my grip on the guide wires and held my breath. The light of the sun glittered up through half a dozen of Ares’ interlaced epicycles. I waited as the obstacle spheres spun away one at a time until, according to my calculations, only two invisible orbs, one of which tethered the sun net, lay between the Rebuke and the open skies.
I pulled the handle of the up wire. The rope strung across the ceiling became taut, pulling on the silver cord. Through the window I saw a gleam of gold rise up along one edge of the net, and I saw the sky become clear and sharp along that gleam. The air rarefied in an arc, pulling the net away from the sphere that trapped it, sliding off like a ring from a finger; then, like a knot untying itself, the sun fragment pulled the net behind it, freeing the ship from its moorings.
The sun fragment, like a racehorse let loose from its hobbles, spun up from the capturing epicycle. It tried to swerve and dance through the sky, but the reins held it; the rarefied air pulled the sun net out of its arc into a straight line, and that line of twisted celestial matter pulled the ball of flame after it.
The ship bucked and turned, following the net in a rapid spin. The breath was pushed from my lungs as the ship swayed angrily from side to side. My eyes swam with sudden dizziness.
The fragment swooped down, pulling us toward Ares. I yanked on the handle to the port rein and heard a snap reverberate down the line. The rope that tethered the port guide wire came away in my hand. I grabbed the wire itself and felt the sharp silver bite into my hand; a trickle of blood fell onto my sleeve, staining the blue scholar’s fringe student red.
But I had the wire in my hand, I pulled, and a new line of gold sprung up along the net, pulling us to port until we faced the sharp edge of the main crystal sphere. I counted five heartbeats and then felt a humming in my back; Phan had activated his Xi strengtheners right on time. The sun fragment drifted farther to port in a gentle curve, and we turned slowly and gracefully away from the cutting edge of the unbreakable crystal, away from Ares and down toward the sun.
I released the guide wires. The gold shimmers vanished from the net, but the sun fragment continued in its flight downward, down and down, until, like a horse tired of running and wanting to graze, it turned away from its marked-out racecourse and took up an orbit around the earth a few hundred miles below the war god’s sphere.
It took me half an hour to untie myself with my one uncut hand and walk across the rocking body of the Rebuke to the other control cabin. Phan was already outside, wearing a smile of satisfaction on his face that must have matched mine.
He bowed deeply to me, and I returned the courtesy.
* * *
We orbited for two days while Ramonojon, Phan, and I checked the ship to see how well it had survived its first use. Apart from some patching needed on the starboard wing and a stronger pull cord for the port guide wire, Rebuke of the Phoenix had come through its maiden flight intact.
Repairs done, we waited until the ship’s natural motion pulled it back toward the invisible currents that connected Ares and the Sun. To my mind the next segment of our flight was the real test to see whether or not we would return to Earth. Neither Phan nor I was sure how fast we would be flying. He knew how great a speed a battle kite could attain in this Xi flow, and I knew how fast sun and moon tethered together would fly if no force was applied, but we could not yet add those knowledges together to calculate the speed of Rebuke of the Phoenix. We had to rely on experiment.
As we orbited under Ares, we resumed our flight stations, Phan and I in our cabins, the rest of the crew strapped to the walls of the cells. The war god circled overhead and the sun fell below us. I pulled on the down guide wire and the netted fireball dove like a dolphin into the Xi current. The Xi strengtheners started to hum, sending a tickling shiver up and down my back, and we began to fall toward the sun, drawn down through the currents in the ocean of air toward the fire below.
The speed pushed me back against the hard wooden wall. The straps bit into my arms and legs, but I did not care. Like a Bakkhanate at a revel, I sucked in the same joy of flight that Kleon reveled in. I felt the navigator’s ghost rise up laughing in my heart, drinking in the exhilaration like blood at a sacrifice, drawing Kleon back to the world of the living.
The navigator’s spirit filled my ears with the sound of blissful harmony that the musical universe sings to the souls of Pythagoreans. And in that ode of the planets I heard, not saw, the Xi flow that gave this rapturous speed to our ship. The song was a duet sung in strophe and antistrophe by Ares and ’Elios in turn. And through my soul and throat Kleon sang with them, raising my untrained voice to match the music played on the lyre of existence.
And then without a warning, without epode, the song stopped and Kleon left me. The fireball had orbited out of the pathway between the planets and the echoes of the song of heaven faded away into the distance.
Dazed by the sounds I had heard, I stumbled from my cabin and surveyed the sky above and below us. Ares was a small red ball hanging high above us and far to port; ’Elios a large golden coin below and to our starboard. Once again they seemed to be mute balls of matter, but I had heard their voices.
Phan joined me to look at the spheres. He looked at each orb in turn as if he had never seen them before.
“Phan Xu-Tzu,” I said. “Is Xi a musical harmony?”
“Yes,” he said. “Is each planet a single note?”
“Yes,” I said.
In my heart Athena raised the Aigis in salute while something that was not a spirit or a god passed through Phan’s eyes and gave him a look of pure, quiet comprehension.
* * *
During the following week, we took four more rides down the song of the Xi flow and reached an orbit only ten thousand miles from the sun. One more downward plunge and we would return to ’Elios himself, and if we survived passage through the riptides of the sun we would reach the inhabited spheres. I decided we should spend several days just orbiting since I felt we all needed time to clear our thoughts before we attempted passage through the sphere that had wrecked Chandra’s Tear.
On the second day of rest, the soldier Xenophanes came to my home cave, where Yellow Hare and I were relaxing after a long day’s work, she smoking her pipe, I reclining against the cave wall.
Xenophanes saluted. “Commander Aeson requests your presence and that of Captain Yellow Hare, Commander Aias,” he said.
“Where does Aeson wish to meet?” I said.
“In the dynamics lab, sir. He is there now with Chief Dynamicist Ramonojon.”
“Inform Commander Aeson that we will be along in a moment,” I said.
Xenophanes saluted again and walked out.
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” I said to Yellow Hare.
“I have a thought,” she said.
“And?”
“And I would prefer that Aeson tell you,”
she said as she stood up and strapped on her armor and handed me my formal robes of command.
A few minutes later we walked down the steps to Ramonojon’s old laboratory. Aeson and Ramonojon were seated on the floor in the center of the room under the ink stain. Aeson was wearing his full formal bronze armor; he had even put on the horsehair-crested helmet, and all had been shined to a sparkle. He sat cross-legged with his sheathed sword lying across his bronze-greaved knees and waited for us to approach and sit down to join them.
From a small pitcher Aeson poured out a bowl of dark red wine and mixed in a little water. He handed me the bowl; I drank a little and waited for him to speak.
“Commander,” Aeson said. “Now that our survival seems likely, have you turned your thoughts to what we will do when we return to Earth?”
“Could you be more specific?” I said.
“Do we hand the sun fragment over at Selene,” he said, “or try to carry out our mission by personally using it on ’AngXou? The latter seems to me quite difficult since we are neither on schedule nor carrying the armament we would need to reach the heart of the Middle Kingdom.”
Ramonojon’s face had grown white with horror as he listened to Aeson. “Is that why you called us together?” he said. “How can you even—?”
He took a deep breath to compose himself, then turned to look at me. “Aias, I would not have helped you repair this ship if I had known you were still planning to use the sun fragment as a weapon. And I am certain Phan would not have helped either.”
“I have not said that I would still use it,” I told him.
Aeson turned to stare at me in surprise. Yellow Hare, however, seemed completely undisturbed by my statement.
“You have put victory back within our grasp, Aias,” Aeson said. “Now we must decide how best to achieve it.”
“That is not what I have done,” I said.
“But—”
“To steal fire from heaven for man’s survival may be justified to the gods,” I said. “But the words of ’Elios to me before the launching of the sun net were quite clear. That fire is not to be used for mortal wars.”
“’Elios spoke to you?”
I nodded.
“Then what are we to do, Commander?” Aeson said; his Spartan soul would never contradict a pronouncement of the gods.
“I do not know,” I said. “I have too many conflicting duties. To the gods, to the League, to Ramonojon and Phan.”
“To Phan?” Aeson said. “What duty do you owe him?”
“His life,” I said. “Without his aid we would all be dead.”
“Without him Chandra’s Tear, our ship, would not have been destroyed,” Aeson said. “We owe no duty to a saboteur.”
“I disagree,” I said. “The onus for the destruction of our ship lies on Mihradarius for his treason and Anaxamander for his folly. Phan was only doing his duty.”
“Aias,” Yellow Hare said gently. “You cannot save Phan’s life. If we give him to the League they will execute him for sabotage. If we return him to the Kingdom they will execute him for failing in his mission.”
“Then why did he help us?” Aeson said. “Why did he not take death when it was offered him?”
“Because a change might come,” Phan said. He was standing on the bottom step of the cave entrance, looking around at the wreckage of Ramonojon’s workplace. “In the turning of heaven and earth, there is always the hope of something unforeseen arising.”
All of us looked up, startled at his entrance, except for Yellow Hare.
“You heard him coming?” I said to Yellow Hare. She nodded curtly.
Phan walked over and sat down next to Ramonojon. The old man sat with his knees bunched up against his chin, hiding his beard behind his now threadbare silks.
“You put your trust in Fortune?” Aeson asked. “She is a most unreliable goddess.”
“Not in Fortune, as you think of it,” Phan said. “In the certain knowledge that the world changes, and that between heaven and earth new things will come to be. It is a final desperate hope, but hope it is.”
Phan looked around at each of us in turn.
“And if nothing comes of the hope,” he said, “then perhaps it will not be so bad to be ruled by you.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“The war,” Phan said. “You ’Ellenes are winning the war. The Son of Heaven has lost his mandate. Maybe it is finally time for an outsider to rule All under Heaven.”
“What makes you think we are winning?” I asked.
Phan waved for the wine bowl. I gave it to him, and he drank deeply. “Everyone knows it. You have conquered the river Mississipp in Atlantea and begun to spread into the Western Territories. You have made incursions into Xin again. Our kites are no match for your celestial ships, nor our cavalry for your artillery. It is common knowledge around ’AngXou that we are going to lose.”
“But—”
“Aias…,” Aeson said.
The one word reminded me of the requirement of secrecy, and yet I could not keep still. Athena filled my heart with the need to comprehend.
“I must speak, Aeson,” I said. I turned to Phan. “I do not understand this at all. The Archons told us that you were winning the war. They said that you had made new advances in miniaturization.”
“Minor tricks,” Phan said. “They gave our warriors individual weapons that could cause injuries your doctors cannot heal, but nothing more came of it. It is not sufficient.”
“But our governors and generals are being assassinated,” I said. “Miltiades told us that Prometheus was our only hope for disrupting the Middler government.”
I lapsed into silence. Phan took a long drink, then closed his eyes. “Assassins are the weapons of desperate men deserted by the gods,” he said, “not the tools of a Son of Heaven bent on conquest.”
Kleio stirred in my heart. “I need to do some studying,” I said, and stood up. “We will discuss this matter again.”
Yellow Hare and I returned to my cave, each of us in quiet communion with our gods, I with Kleio, Yellow Hare with ’Era.
In my broken and battered home, I rooted around through the smashed furniture and wrecked cases until I found, wrapped in some old robes, the scroll Ramonojon had given me so long ago in the shadow of the Muses on the Acropolis, the scroll Yellow Hare’s presence had prevented me from looking at: the Records of the Historian by Ssu-ma X’ien.
“Yellow Hare,” I said, “I hope you will not think less of me for hiding this from you.”
“What is it?” she said.
“Middle Kingdom history. Ramonojon brought it back with him. I assume he obtained it from his Buddhist friends.”
“At first you did not know me to trust me,” she said. “Then you had Ramonojon to protect. Since then you have had other worries. There is no dishonor in your concealment.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I slid the rice paper roll out of its plain black lacquer case and began to read an eight-centuries-old account of Alexander’s war on the Middle Kingdom and the changes it wrought inside All under Heaven. It was a strange document, unlike the histories written before the Akademe banished Kleio; its chapters were titled with the names of different people involved in that war and in the placing of the first ’An emperor on the throne. Each chapter told the life story of that person and concluded with a brief explanation of Ssu-ma’s opinion of his character and how he helped or hindered the cause of the Middle Kingdom. And though it was a tale of men’s deeds it was not like reading a chronicle of heroes. There was no sense of worship, no reverence even for the most exalted people. It was more like a list of proofs than a remembrance for the honored dead.
I looked up some time later with an itch in my mind, as if Athena were trying to burst forth from my head. Yellow Hare sat against the wall where the cubbyholes had once hung, quietly smoking her pipe.
“I think I understand how both sides of a war can think they are losing,” I said to
her.
She extinguished the burning leaves with her hand and stared at me with her wide golden eyes. “Say on.”
“What does Sparta teach is the most important element in the waging of successful war?”
“Generals whose souls have been filled with the spirit of war and the favor of the gods.”
“So if our side has no such generals we would lose the war.”
“Of course.”
“The Middlers see it differently. Instead of filling their leaders with the spirit, they choose as their generals those who won battles as captains. They take these earlier victories as proof that these officers wage war in accord with the way of battle.”
“I do not understand,” she said. “A successful captain may be made general if he shows the proper spirit; if not he would remain captain.”
“But to the Middlers war is a way, not a spirit. Spirits may help or hinder battles, and there are gods who oversee the progress of war, but they do not give victory or defeat; it is the way the general wages war that determines success.”
Yellow Hare closed her eyes and the mantle of war fell upon her shoulders. The gods of battle clustered around her as she thought upon my words.
“It could be done that way,” she said at last. “Without offending the gods, a man could be a general without a warrior’s soul. But he could not persevere as a Spartan must. Eventually he would give up the life of war and some other general would take his place.”
“And the same applies to their rulers,” I said. “We take as leaders those who show the potential to be heroes; they choose those who demonstrate accord with the way of heaven, which can change.”
“Our way is clearly better,” Yellow Hare said. “We find souls with constancy.”
“Is it?” I replied. “Consider Mihradarius.”
“What about him?”
“He had great potential, the genius that makes Athenian heroes. If he had not felt the need to stop Sunthief, he might have risen to the post of Archon. Or consider my father.”
Yellow Hare growled.
“He was an excellent general who inspired loyalty among his troops and governed cities well, but as you and Aeson have both pointed out, he violated the true essence of Sparta. A Middler general would hold to that essence while he served in war.”
Celestial Matters Page 30