“None,” she whispered. “My heart is his.”
There was a long, aching silence before he sighed and straightened. The barriers were back in place now, his eyes glinting with hurt pride and anger and vanquished desire. “So what is it about him that makes him so much more attractive than me?”
Consuela found herself unable to respond with anger. She looked at Rick and saw him and his distress through the pain in her own heart. She saw how his pride had been pierced by the fact that despite his looks and his abilities and his strength, she preferred another. Someone with whom he could not compete. Someone he could not overcome, and thus win her affection. And he had lost for reasons he did not understand.
So her answer was gentle, despite his wounded rage. “Because he needs me,” she said, her voice soft.
Her words penetrated to a level so deep that his own anger dissolved. “So do I,” he croaked.
Slowly she shook her head. “You rely on nothing and nobody except yourself. This is the perfect setup for you. Finally you’re away from your parents and everybody else you ever knew, so you can stand totally alone and be the strongest and the best. The champion.”
“And that’s not enough for you?”
“Wander has a different kind of strength,” Consuela replied. “He is strong enough to know how much he needs me.”
“I don’t understand that,” Rick said. “Not at all.”
“I know,” Consuela answered. “But it’s true just the same.”
Even though it hurt his pride to do so, he had to ask once more. Give it a final fighting shot. “Couldn’t you give me a chance?”
Again there was the sense of knowing more than could have ever come from herself. “You don’t love me, Rick. Not really. You see the love and the connection between Wander and me, and that is what you want.” With a gentleness she would have never thought possible, she stilled his voice before it could be raised in protest by raising one hand and placing it against his lips. “Don’t say anything, please. You’re hurt and you’re angry, and you might say something that could keep us from being friends. And I need your friendship, Rick. Do you see what I’m saying? I need this.”
“But not my love,” he muttered.
“I know you don’t believe what I’m saying now, but if you’ll please, please just give it a little time, I think you will see that it is the truth. You are attracted to me because I am learning what it means to be completely open and give my heart and my mind and my love and my life to someone else.”
She had to stop there, almost blinded by Wander’s absence. She swallowed, took a shaky breath, and saw that even this was somehow intended, for her open confession had the effect of shaking Rick out of his pride-filled self-remorse. She swallowed again, and went on, “I hope and pray that you will find this same love for yourself someday, Rick. Because you are truly a special person. I’m not just saying that. You are strong and incredibly handsome, and I need you to lean on just now.”
Again the heat pressed up against the back of her eyes, and a single tear slipped through. “But Wander is so much a part of me that loving him is as natural as breathing. And his absence is a wound that almost cripples me. So please be my friend. I need a friend, Rick. Especially now.”
****
“Four minutes and counting.”
“Power up,” Captain Arnol commanded, his face set in lines of granite.
“Power to redline crest,” the power controlwoman confirmed.
“Cast off all bonds,” Arnol intoned.
“Ship free and floating,” the helmsman responded.
Through the vast stretches of open transparency, Consuela watched the massive cables fall with lumbering slowness toward the distant earth. The ship was now balanced upon the tight beam of its own power.
“All instruments tracking,” the navigator stated. “Departure path confirmed, destination recorded.”
“Avanti spaceport control grants us leave,” the signals officer announced.
Dunlevy glanced over to where Consuela sat beside him, making sure she was following the exchange. The ship would travel along well-established lightways for at least the first portion of this journey, as the presence of a pilot on board remained a tightly monitored secret. Only the chancellor and a few close allies, including the officers in charge of Avanti’s main spaceport, knew Dunlevy was on board. As there were no formal duties for a pilot, Dunlevy stood as back-up watch communicator and Consuela’s tutor.
“Three minutes thirty seconds,” the helmsman intoned.
The ship’s flight deck stood upon the ship’s crest like a vast crown. The chamber was far larger than that of the ship that had brought her to Avanti, as many of the mining functions would also be controlled from this point. For that same reason the interconnected vision system, which granted them the sense of having a window to the outside, was not restricted to just the ceiling overhead. Instead, the seamless view continued down around them, with bright brass handrails marking the chamber’s boundaries.
“Three minutes.”
What was more, the room was circled a second time, two paces in from the handrails, sectioned to coincide with the control stations, rising like concentric circles, giving views down through the floor itself. Yet instead of seeing the next ship’s level, cameras fitted at the base of the broad dome granted them the sense of looking down the vessel’s vast tubular length. Steps leading to and from the flight deck stations spread out between these floor-based visors like segmented spokes of a carpeted wheel.
“Two minutes.”
“All officers,” Arnol intoned. “Sound by station.”
As Consuela listened to the final station-by-station check, she looked down and through the nearest floor-visor. Faint dust clouds were stirred up along the distant desert valley floor. All human activity had vanished from sight.
“One minute and counting. All systems green.”
She looked around, saw how the ship was surrounded by giant serrated peaks. Overhead gleamed a pair of suns connected by gleaming rivers of light. She strived to take it all in, to imbed it deep within her, to treasure the memory for all her days to come.
“Thirty seconds.”
A voice crackled through the ship’s intercom. “Avanti spaceport, watch commandant speaking. Signing off, Avenger. Good luck, and good hunting.”
“Roger, spaceport. Spaceship Avenger, Captain Arnol at helm. We will restore contact when we have news worthy to report.”
“Five, four, three, two, one, lift-off. We have lift-off.”
“Time to amp up and begin charting,” Dunlevy said quietly.
Consuela fumbled for her headset’s power control. Her attention remained held by the arresting vista surrounding her. Slowly, slowly, the ship rose from its valley, picking up speed with such grace and silence that it was hard to realize, except that now the peaks were far below her, and the sky was racing through darker and darker shades of blue.
“Consuela.”
“Just a minute.” Through the floor visor she watched as the dry ocher patch that had once been the surrounding desert shrank and shrank and shrank until it was just one small island encircled by great fields of white clouds. And then the clouds fell farther and farther behind, until she could look and see the entire great globe with its gently curving surface and seas and snowcaps and lights where cities were adjusting to the coming night.
Night.
The double suns with their shimmering rivers of light now rested upon a backdrop of utter black. And stars. If she turned away from the dual suns, everywhere she saw stars. Great blazing ribbons of silver light streaking across the depths of space.
“Scout, it is time.”
“Right with you.” She spotted the pair of moons then, rushing up and past on either side, their pitted surfaces glowing with every hue imaginable, the mountains and plains and exposed minerals reflecting the multitude of shades flaring down from the dual suns.
Consuela made her feeble fingers fit the head
set to her temples, glanced over, found Dunlevy staring at her strangely. “What?”
“You have never seen a lift-off before, have you?”
“On television.”
“Your homeworld did not have airships, spaceports, floaters, or regular contact with the Hegemony?”
“My homeworld,” Consuela replied, “did not have any of those things and a lot of other stuff besides.”
“I had heard,” he said, his mind busy adjusting to this new information, “that there were frontier stations out beyond the Rim that had been lost during turmoil after the Great Transition. Planets that had reverted to primitive states and forgotten that there even was such a thing as the Hegemony.” He looked at her. “Your homeworld was such a primitive?”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
“So how then were you discovered?”
“I guess you could say,” Consuela replied, and looked down at the swiftly shrinking globe below them, “that I just got lucky.”
****
As per standard instructions, Digs pushed open the stout door and approached the diplomat’s desk to report, “A ship blasted off from Avanti at the start of the current watch. Calls itself Avenger. Strange name for a giant gas miner, if you ask me.”
The diplomat kept writing, his attention only half caught by the scout’s report. “The sooner we’re done with that blasted . . .” He caught himself and glared at Digs. “That was your report? You disturb my routine to tell me that this ship carries a strange name?”
“The planet is permanently flagged,” Digs reminded him. “We are ordered to report anything out of the ordinary. The ship is headed offworld by lightwave transport, and not headed directly to their final destination. According to the manifest, they plan to test all systems before making a jump. And they are carrying a shipment destined for a nearby star system.”
The diplomat’s irritation subsided. “You say this is a new vessel?”
“First time outbound,” Digs confirmed. “Never even made an interplanetary trial. Seven months behind schedule, according to our records.”
“Then it seems a reasonable plan.” The diplomat mulled it over. “Is this the ship that man, what is his name—Oh yes, Arnol. Is he commanding this Avenger?”
“I’d have to check the manifest,” Digs lied, without understanding why, masking the fact that it was there in his pocket. Hiding his surprise that a diplomat would be interested in one particular ship’s commander. “But I think I saw that name somewhere.”
The diplomat showed a flicker of interest. “Any idea what cargo they will be delivering locally?”
Digs shrugged. “Usual Avanti cargo, far as I could make out. High-tech stuff, a lot of things I couldn’t identify. Lot of high price tags, that caught my eye.”
“Let me have a copy of their trajectory and manifest,” the diplomat said, his voice lowering to an overly casual tone.
“Right.” He took that as dismissal and started for the door.
“Just a minute.” When Digs had turned back around, the diplomat demanded, “Just exactly what is a scout doing monitoring a flagged planet?”
“Monitor Damien handled that quadrant until this morning,” Digs answered. “But he had a sudden attack of the screaming jeebies.”
“Don’t be insolent,” the diplomat snapped.
“I don’t know what else to call it when a monitor tears off his headset and goes into a weeping fit right there in the cavern.” Digs’ voice was overly harsh, but he was beyond caring. He and Wander had just been checking in when it happened. His skin still crawled from the memory, and the fear that it might happen to him someday. “Besides, since it was Wander’s home planet and we’re working from that point anyway—”
“What?” The diplomat half rose from his seat. “Avanti is not that boy’s homeworld.”
“It’s not?” Digs was caught flat-footed, something that rarely happened. “I thought—”
“Go get the boy,” the diplomat snarled. “Bring him to me. Now.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I can direct the ship through transition,” Pilot Dunlevy was saying. “I can chart the course. But only you can tell us where our destination lies.”
Consuela studied his face, saw that he spoke in earnest. “You can’t see the shadowlanes?”
“I knew of them only through rumors, until I met you.”
Their pilot’s station formed the uppermost portion of the flight deck’s right-hand ring, or starboard deck as it was known. Light came both from the stars overhead and from soft illumination encircling each ring as well as from the flickering lights on each station’s control panels. The effect was both to unify the flight deck and to offer each station a sense of comfortable isolation.
Consuela continued to gaze at him. “No one else can see them?”
“No one that I know. No one with whom I have ever spoken. No one I have ever heard of before.” He let that news sink in a moment, then continued, “There is endless speculation wherever pilots gather and speak freely. But never have I met someone who claims to sense them as I do a lightway.”
“It’s all so natural to me,” she said.
“I believe you,” he said somberly. “Listen. A lightway is a carefully measured route, used by Hegemony ships since the dawn of interstellar travel. They are anchored by power satellites, great banks of prisms and mirrors and focusing instruments in permanent solar orbits.”
“Wander told me about that. Part of it, anyway,” she said, glad she could say his name without the catch in her throat.
“For those who truly believe shadowlanes exist—”
“They exist,” she said. “Take my word for it. Please.”
“The best explanation I have heard for their disappearance,” he corrected himself, “is that they were made to disappear. There was a period called the Great Transition, brought on by the training and deployment of pilots, when in the course of fifty years the empire underwent a tenfold expansion. Imagine. Ten times the number of stellar systems and perhaps five times that number of new transport lanes. A complete restructuring of the known universe.”
Dunlevy raised his eyes to the stars overhead. “At such a time of upheaval, with careful planning, any number of things could be made to disappear.”
“But only if the Hegemony was behind it,” Consuela offered.
“Exactly,” Dunlevy agreed. “By locating the shadowlanes, your friend has uncovered one of the Hegemony’s darkest and most ancient secrets.”
A keening pierced her along with the sudden fear of what they might do to Wander in return. She pushed it away by asking, “So what is it I am sensing?”
“Traces,” he replied. “Traces so faint and so old that they are beyond the ken of every other pilot I have ever met.”
Captain Arnol swiveled about and addressed Dunlevy, “I am waiting your first report, Pilot.”
“Aye, Captain.” Hastily Dunlevy fitted his headset into place, said loud enough for Arnol to overhear, “We’ll continue your lessons off watch, Scout. Now hook in and power up.”
Consuela did as she was told. They were still a full day’s acceleration from the first point where the Three Planets’ records showed that a ship traveling upon this lightwave had sent its final message. She knew for certain that she could not reach that far, not yet. But Arnol wanted a constant check made of the path they flew, running forward as far as she could manage. Which meant that she would never be off the flight deck for more than a couple of hours at a time. She did not mind, not really. She was busy, she was needed, and she was moving toward her love.
But scarcely had she begun to turn the dial on her headset when the entire flight deck seemed to vanish beyond the power of an incoming message.
Before she knew it, she was on her feet, screaming at the unseen ceiling overhead, “Wander! I can hear him! He’s here!”
****
“Forget her!” The diplomat slammed his fist down on the desk. “Accept that for you, she no lon
ger exists!”
“I can’t do that,” Wander replied quietly.
His subdued state calmed the diplomat somewhat. “You must. Be forewarned, Scout, your life hangs by the slenderest of threads.”
Wander kept his eyes downcast, afraid that if he looked up, the diplomat would detect the love and the yearning and the stubborn hope radiating from his heart.
His first warning that something was amiss had come with shocking suddenness. Earlier that same day, Digs had guided him not down to the training ring where all his other watches had taken place, but over a segment of the great cavern to where a second, far greater ring rose from the yellow stone floor. This was one of seven monitor stations, Digs had explained, from which the empire was kept under constant surveillance. One of the senior monitors had already heard of Wander’s success in the first trial and had wanted to meet him.
But as they had floated down inside the ring, one of the three men seated at the central station had suddenly let out a bloodcurdling shriek, flung his headset up and over the ring, and started clawing at his robes. “Home! I want to go home! Take me away, I can’t stand it! No more, I beg you,” and then the young man had collapsed into a sobbing heap.
The two other monitors, both older and gray-bearded, had ignored the arriving pair completely. With disjointed movements they had risen from their stations and moved toward the fellow.
One knelt beside the sobbing young man, looked at his mate, and asked, “You felt it also?”
The other man, the eldest of the trio, nodded back. “It shook me to the core, I can tell you that.”
“What was it?”
“No idea,” the elder replied. “None whatsoever. I have never experienced anything like it, and hope I never do again.”
“I felt as though somebody had attacked my heart,” the kneeling man whispered, allowing the sobbing young man to rock within his arms. “Torn it open. Told me things I never-”
The elder noticed them then. He frowned, then nodded as his addled mind struggled to focus. “You’re Digs and that new trainee.”
“Scout Wander, Senior Monitor,” Digs replied for him, his own eyes never leaving the crumpled form.
The Dream Voyagers Page 23