Celestial Matters

by Garfinkle, Richard

  I steered the ship into the Xi flow connecting Aphrodite and ’Ermes, and we begin to pick up speed. Out the fore window I saw ’Ermes grow larger and larger, and beyond it I saw a little dot of silver, Selene. The Moon was in a straight line with ’Ermes and Aphrodite. At first I thought nothing of that, but as the song of the Xi flow entered my mind, I realized that I was hearing three voices singing, not two.

  Too late the thought arose from the cavern of Taoist science that three planets aligned made an immensely stronger flow than just two. We rushed down the river of Xi, faster and faster. I did not know if Rebuke could take the stress, especially after her recent injuries. But there was nothing I could do to stop the flight.

  The planet of ’Ermes grew from a tiny dot to its full size in mere minutes. We hurtled down toward him, skipping out of the main flow and across the currents around the planet of messengers. In seconds we were bearing down on the red-brown orb itself. I held my breath and pulled gently on the up wire. It lashed back, tearing skin from my hand. I pulled again and the impellers came up in a thin gold line, rarefying the air above the net.

  Rebuke rose slowly above the horizon of ’Ermes. Four crimson celestial ships flew up from the cave in the planet to meet us, but we rushed past them. ’Elios pulled our chariot and Xi sped us on our way and we could not have slowed to meet those ’Ermean envoys if I had wanted to.

  Then we were over ’Ermes and through the crystal sphere. The trio of singers became a duet as Aphrodite’s note vanished from the chord. Phan turned off the Xi strengtheners and Rebuke orbited out of the flow hundreds of miles below the sphere of ’Ermes. It would be hours before those four ships we passed caught up with us.

  Anaxamander and his guards were dazed by the flight. They hung limply from their straps, but they were still conscious and though their aim was very bad they would still be able to shoot me with their throwers. I prayed briefly to ’Ephaistos, god of crafts, that my devices would work while I untied the last of my restraints and stood up.

  “Do not move,” Anaxamander said. He waved his thrower at me like a drunkard and tried to fumble at his restraints.

  My soul composed for death, I walked toward him and grabbed the long metal tube that he held out in front of him. Anaxamander fired at my chest. A spray of tetras rushed forward, coming within an inch of my robes. Then they entered the thin region of slightly rarefied air in front of me. The bronze projectiles swerved to the side and slammed hard against the wall. The guards fired and the same thing happened to their shots. Anaxamander gaped as I took his thrower from him.

  “What have you done?” he said, his voice slurred.

  I said nothing. Instead I turned the thrower toward the guards.

  “Drop your weapons,” I said. They did so. Then one by one I knotted their restraining leathers together, securing them to the walls.

  “Aias,” Anaxamander said, “I will see you in ’Ades for this.”

  “Security Chief Anaxamander,” I said turning to face him. “I, Aias of Athens, sole commander of the vessel Rebuke of the Phoenix, do hereby sentence you to death for mutiny. Sentence will be carried out by Captain Yellow Hare of Sparta. When next you see her, she will take your life.”

  I turned and left the cabin. Then I ran across the open ground to the other control room. I had to reach Phan before his guards realized that something had gone wrong.

  Behind us, a dozen small silver globs flew away from the four ships pursuing us. Fast moon sleds. Our lead time had been cut to half an hour at the most.

  I ran through the door in Phan’s cabin and caught the first guard just as he finished unstrapping himself.

  “Sit down!” I said as I leveled the thrower at his face. I tied him and his comrades up and released Phan from his control seat.

  There were scars on the old man’s face. The sleeves of his silk robes had been torn off, and his arms were covered with burn marks. His eyes were dull with pain, but he managed a weak smile when he saw me. I handed him a strip of leather. “Put this in your robes,” I said.

  He studied it for a moment with Akademic detachment. “It is a guide to control the movements of small pieces of metal,” he said.

  “It deflects thrower shots,” I said.

  “But evac thrower shots are too fast to be controlled by the Xi-flows, unless…” He turned the strip over. “You lined it with fire-gold.”

  He slipped the deflector under his robes.

  “Yes,” I said. I led him outside, and we ran toward the prison tunnels. I held his arm to steady him as we went. “The fire-gold gives the tetras enough impetus to follow the guideline.”

  “Amazing,” he said, and bowed deeply to me. “Truly Heaven has opened your mind.”

  I bowed back to him before resuming our dash to the brig. But we had not been needed there. Yellow Hare, Aeson, our three soldiers, and Ramonojon emerged from the tunnels behind a line of four unarmed guards. Aeson and Yellow Hare were both armed and armored and each carried a drawn thrower.

  Aeson and Yellow Hare saluted me. A moment later Xenophanes, ’Eraklites, and Solon did the same.

  “What is to be done with the prisoners, Commander?” Aeson said.

  My answer was cut off as from the storage cave entrance two dozen yards portward the last dozen of Anaxamander’s soldiers charged onto the ship’s surface, their swords and throwers drawn, and their lips shouting war cries into the crimson skies.

  π

  Anaxamander’s phalanx fired, filling the air with a shower of sharpened steel tetras that sped toward us like a myriad of angry hornets.

  “Stand firm!” I yelled. My crew, obedient and confident, did not move, defiantly standing firm like emplaced targets while the deadly projectiles flew toward us. Then, to the confusion of our enemies, as the shots were about to tear through our clothes and skin, the glinting steel baubles turned and fountained upward into the sky. A few seconds later, the tetras, their impetus spent, fell back down and clattered harmlessly onto the surface of the ship.

  “Surrender!” I called across the open space at the base of the hill toward the attacking soldiers. “Your leader, Anaxamander, has been taken. Surrender and your lives will be spared.”

  Their answer was another useless volley of swift but ineffectual shots.

  I nodded to Yellow Hare; she and Aeson leveled their throwers to return fire. They aimed low, and with Spartan accuracy and efficiency fired short bursts of tetras into the legs of our attackers. The pellets cracked through the soldiers’ greaves; blood flowed from their calves until their legs could no longer support them One by one the soldiers crumpled to the deck until Yellow Hare and Aeson had winnowed their numbers from twelve to six. Then their fanaticism finally broke, and the six who could still stand retreated into the storage cave, taking cover inside the arched entryway of the cavern.

  “Should we pursue them?” Yellow Hare asked.

  I turned to look aft. The convoy of moon sleds was only a few miles behind us. All I had to do was wait for them to arrive and we would have plenty of soldiers to assist us in rounding up the renegades. At that moment I could have done nothing, could have let the squadrons from the ships of ’Ermes come to our assistance. They would have eagerly aided us in quelling the mutiny, and then assisted me in returning to Earth, to the Delian League, to a hero’s welcome for a great duty fulfilled.

  And yet …

  A spark flared to sudden life in my mind, a tiny firelight that grew into a flickering torch brand. At first I thought the flame was ’Elios, but the sun god’s light would have grown brighter still until it was a blinding crown of fire. This flame was smaller, and there was something comforting and warming about it, like the welcoming crackle of a hearth fire on a winter’s night.

  Then I saw a hand holding out the torch, offering the flame to me: the hand of Prometheus, creator of humanity, forewarner of mortal and immortal alike, he who had dared the wrath of Zeus himself and suffered, chained to a mountain for the sake of mankind.

  W
ill you give fire to man? the prophetic Titan asked, and my mind filled with visions of battle. Celestial flame scoured the earth, boiled away rivers, scorched fields, burned away the stone walls of cities, consumed steel towers like tallow candles, and in a flash reduced humans in their millions to coils of smoke rising high into the air.

  Or will you give fire to man? Prometheus asked. The Titan drew my eyes away from war, but did not give me peace to look at. He showed me something else, something indistinct, complex, subtle, imageless. It was not a picture, though light transmitted it; it was not breath, though I inhaled it. It was pure, clean Pneuma, the substance of thought, the subtle body of the mind, composed purely of fire and air, unsullied by any touch of earth or water. He showed me and filled me with the atmosphere that lies just inside the Sphere of Fixed Stars. Look up, the Titan said. Bring down the starlight lanterns from the heights of heaven, not the fire that lives only halfway up the ladder of the universe.

  My eyes flashed open and I saw the spheres above, I saw the climb that could be made by man, if, if. If the moon sleds just a mile above Rebuke of the Phoenix were not permitted to land.

  “No, Yellow Hare,” I said. “Do not chase them.”

  I turned to look at the others. “Flight stations, everyone!” I said. “Aeson, have your men drag the wounded soldiers below. Yellow Hare, come with me.”

  No one questioned my orders. Phan darted around the hill to his cabin. Aeson, Ramonojon, and our soldiers pulled the injured men down the tunnel to the brig while Yellow Hare and I took off at a run toward my control cabin.

  The moon sleds came in close, circling the ship cautiously, studying the unexpected configuration of Rebuke, then finally drawing up into a line across our stern preparatory to trying to land on the hill.

  Yellow Hare and I reached my cabin; I threw open the door. Anaxamander and his two guards were exactly as I had left them, tied to the walls and spitting with fury.

  “Kill him,” I said to Yellow Hare.

  Anaxamander’s eyes grew wide and he started to speak, but with one smooth, swift motion Yellow Hare drew her sword and decapitated the security chief before a word could leave his mouth. His men screamed and cursed, but one glare from Yellow Hare quelled them.

  As I secured myself to the pilot’s chair, my bodyguard cut Anaxamander’s corpse loose from the wall and threw his carcass and his severed head out the door onto the surface of Rebuke of the Phoenix to fall into empty air when next the ship turned downward toward the earth.

  Yellow Hare then strapped herself down on the floor next to me.

  I gathered the reins in my hand and, pulling gently on the port and starboard wires, signaled Phan to turn on the Xi strengtheners. The familiar hum started up, sending slight shivers through my back and arms. I pulled the starboard rein and turned the ship around, reversing our course to speed us back toward the Xi line that connected ’Ermes and Selene. Our pursuers were left no doubt gravely confused and wondering just who was piloting this strange vessel.

  Before we reached the river of Xi, we passed a mere fifty miles under the four ’Ermean celestial ships which had been following their moon sleds. The four ships stopped in midair and waited for us to rise to meet them, but we continued in our flight, passing swiftly beneath those ruddy orange rods of ’Ermes.

  I could imagine the confusion of their commanders and the debates they must have had as to what to do. Long before they came to any decision, we had entered the flow, turned downward, and crossed a thousand miles of space. With only ballast balls and impellers to lend them speed in descent, it would be many hours before they could catch up with us.

  I signaled Phan to turn off the Xi strengtheners, and pulled Rebuke into a stable orbit.

  Only when my hands had left the reins did Yellow Hare ask me the question that had clearly been troubling her.

  “What duty are you pursuing, Aias?” she said.

  “The duty I owe to the gods,” I answered, unstrapping myself. I nodded toward the two guards tied to the wall. “Bring them, please.”

  “Yes, Commander,” Yellow Hare said. She bound the hands of Anaxamander’s guards with their own restraints and marched them at sword’s point to the base of the hill where the rest of the crew and the six injured guards waited.

  “The rest of Anaxamander’s men are tied up in the storage cave,” Aeson said to me. “We caught them unawares when you slowed the ship.”

  “Bring them out, please,” I said.

  Aeson and our three soldiers entered the cavern and emerged leading the last half dozen of the mutineers, unarmored, their hands bound behind them. At my instructions all fourteen of the prisoners were seated in a line at the base of the hill. My crew stood in front of them waiting to hear my words.

  “This ship is not returning to the Delian League,” I said.

  There was a stunned silence, broken only by the mutters of “Traitor” from Anaxamander’s soldiers.

  “Nor is it going to the Middle Kingdom,” I said.

  Aeson stepped from the line and walked toward me, his hand on his sword’s pommel and his eyes sad with a spirit of unwanted duty. But Yellow Hare stepped between us, blocking his path. She held her hands at her side and met his gray gaze with her gleaming gold eyes.

  For a time they stood, unmoving, facing each other like two statues. No words were spoken, but their spirits wrestled in a silent challenge of pure Spartan determination. At last Aeson cast down his gaze and broke the silence, speaking, but to me, not to Yellow Hare.

  “Aias of Athens, I require that you justify your orders,” my co-commander said.

  “If we return to the League,” I said, “the Archons will be forced by their own sense of duty and their own awareness of the desperate state of our people to use the sun fragment as a weapon. I cannot permit them to do that.”

  “But you know that the situation is not desperate,” Aeson said.

  “But I could not convince them of that,” I said. “Kroisos is an Akademic; he will not hear the words of history. And Miltiades can not surrender a weapon once it is in his hands, can he?”

  Aeson slowly shook his head. “No Archon of Sparta would so betray his oath.”

  “The Archons would be trapped by their minds and their duties,” I said, “into doing that which the gods would not have done.”

  “And you?” Aeson said.

  “I was offered a choice,” I said. “I made it. I will undo the damage of Sunthief and at the same time give the Delian League what it is my duty to give them. But to do that, I must return to Earth with this ship.”

  Aeson turned back to Yellow Hare. “Why do you support him in this action?” he said.

  “For the same reason you gave him your authority to command,” she said.

  “But we are no longer beyond human reach,” Aeson said. “We have returned to civilized space.”

  “No,” said Yellow Hare. “We will not have so returned until Aias says we have. Until then we are still surrounded by obstacles to survival and duty, and it is between Aias and the gods to decide what we must do.”

  “What have you seen?” Aeson asked, stepping close to her and locking his gaze with hers.

  “The face of Zeus through the eyes of ’Era,” Yellow Hare replied.

  Aeson stepped back and drew his sword with one swift motion. Yellow Hare stepped aside, giving Aeson a clear path to reach me. Phan gasped, but I stood still, waiting for what was to come. Aeson stepped forward and handed me the weapon hilt first. “I remain at your command.”

  “Thank you, Aeson,” I said, handing back the sword. “The first thing we must do is remove our enemies from this ship.”

  Anaxamander’s soldiers looked up at me; some glared with defiance, others sweated in their fear. I walked over to where they sat, fourteen men in a row.

  “I am not going to kill you,” I said, kneeling down and looking into their worried faces. “You thought you were doing your duty in obeying Anaxamander. You will be set adrift on one of your moon sled
s. Our pursuers will find you and pick you up.”

  I turned to Yellow Hare. “Tie them tightly to the moon sled. I am going to write a message to the Archons and leave it with them.”

  “What message?” Aeson said.

  “A cursory explanation of everything that has happened since our departure from Earth, with particular emphasis on Anaxamander’s unlawful takeover of Chandra’s Tear and his appointment of that traitor Mihradarius as Scientific Commander.”

  “And will you explain why we are not returning to fulfill our mission?”

  “That will have to wait,” I said. “But the message will make clear to Kroisos how ill-omened this expedition was, and it will explain to Miltiades why we did not carry out the orders he gave us. The rest of the explanation will follow once we have returned to Earth.”

  “Why wait?” Aeson said.

  “Because the explanation will require compelling evidence which I cannot give from here.”

  While the others secured the prisoners to the sled, I wrote the message and sealed it with the stamp of my commander’s seal. The owl of Athens impressed in black wax on the edge of the paper stared up at me, and I felt Athena’s reassuring presence flutter through the dark places of my heart on the wings of night.

  The prisoners were strapped down supine in the center of the sled, forced to stare up at the sky. I approached the glowing silver disk and was about to tie the scroll onto one of their chests when Athena gently nudged me.

  “Xenophanes, ’Eraklites, Solon,” I called out. The three soldiers stepped forward and saluted.

  “What is to come is beyond the duties of common soldiers,” I said. “Therefore I am ordering you to accompany these prisoners and deliver them to the commanders of whichever celestial ship rescues the sled.”

  “Yes, Commander,” they said. There was a glimmer of relief in their eyes. I had no doubt that the events they had witnessed and taken part in since the wreck of Chandra’s Tear had been greater trials than they had been trained to endure.