He felt her come close to him, thrusting her body against him. He could here her husky breathing, could feel her excited heartbeat. His own body was on fire, with every nerve ending screaming to be touched, and when touched, bursting in tactile fireworks of ecstasy.
He felt her warm, wet mouth enveloping his reproductive organs. He closed his eyes. Was he helpless against it, or did the drug only make him think he was helpless against it?
He had to turn his mind away from her. It was like being in a crashing Aves, like all his strength was not enough to pull the ship out of its fatal dive, but it was all he could do. He had to invoke a meditation, the Meditation of Oing. He had to shift himself away from the pleasure she was forcing on him. He had to put his mind into Oing.
I am Oing, he thought. Oing is me. All is Oing. Oing is all. I am Oing. Oing is all.
Hard, hard he thought against the words, like he was pounding on the bars of the cage of his mind. I am Oing. I am Oing. Oing is all.
The fireworks and ecstasy slowly receded. He felt a transition, a sense of separation between the body and the spirit. He was outside the scene, but aware of what was being done to him. Mercuria was on her knees, devouring him.
And he was…
Oing!
… rising
Pegaus — Fast Eddie’s InterStellar Slam-n-Jam Eddie Roebuck had Puck pinned behind the bar and was banging his small metal head against the deck. “That’s it!” Eddie yelled at him. “You’ve sprayed the last customer with your last Mauve Daiquiri.
Now, I’m going to reprogram you with a rotary blade.”
The small mechanoid squealed in protest. Eliza Jane Change sat at the bar, nursing a large janeberry-flavored tea. There were about 15 others from the crew in the bar, three of whom, two women and a man from the ship’s technical core, were dripping with Mauve Daiquiri residue. They were not enjoying the current drama, but they were about to get another.
The hatch slid open, and Flight Captain Driver entered, looking peeved. His mouth was set in a tight straight line. He crossed to Eliza and stood next to her at the bar. “How long have you been here?” he asked her.
She answered him casually. “Forty-seven minutes.”
“Did you forget that you were supposed to meet me on the starboard observation spar?”
“I did not forget,” she told him. There was a reason, she didn’t go there because she knew very well what would be coming next. “I thought if I came here, you would find me.” Puck squealed again. Eddie had flipped him over and was removing his vocalization module. The mechanoid fell silent, and Eddie began digging for the motor control module.
Diver reached into the sleeve pocket of his uniform. “I had hoped the setting for this would be more romantic, or at least more civilized, but if you would rather we did it here.” He drew out a ring, an amazingly beautiful ring that shined like a bright star in the dim light of the bar. Several of the other customers went “ahhhhh!”
Driver handed the ring to her. “It’s a starfire crystal, diamond mostly, with molecules of luminescent triluminarium…”
“I know what a starfire crystal is,” Eliza told him. She looked at the ring as though it were some strange object handed to her in a foreign land, and she couldn’t decide whether it was meant as a pet or as an hors d’oeuvre.
Driver had prepared a little speech, which he had hoped to give to her beneath stars shining as brightly as the ring he just gave her. Instead, he would tell her here, in this bar, in front of other crewmen, with a smell of spilled ale and mauve daiquiri filling the air. “Eliza Jane Change, you are the woman I want to be with, always. I want our souls to be united. I want you and me to become us and we. I don’t want to spend another day apart from you. I want our lives to become our life. Eliza, will you make me whole, one year from day, will you become one with me.”
She pretended to examine the ring. “I’ve been expecting this for a long time,” she said very gently.
“But I never thought about exactly what I would say.”
“Just one word,” Driver told her, in a hushed voice. “Either word, there are only two choices. Even if you refuse me, I have to know. But I hope you will not refuse because I will spend every day of the rest of my life making sure you never regretted choosing me.”
Eddie looked back and forth between them, and at the other people in the Slam-n-Jam, trying to endure this awkwardness, trying not to pay too much attention while trying not to appear indifferent at the same time. “Drama is bad for business,” said Eddie Roebuck.
She held the ring out in front of her. “Before I take your ring, may I ask one thing of you?”
“Anything,” Matthew said. If he had been perturbed upon entering the bar, the sight of Eliza had put his mind and emotions into absolute focus.
“There is a custom among the people of your planet, the Convergence. Before I say yes, I want to undergo the ritual of Convergence with you.”
Matthew was taken aback. “But the Convergence only happens after two people have agreed to marry. No one does it before accepting a proposal… it’s unseemly…” She looked at him, that way she always did, the way an owner might stare disapprovingly at an overly exuberant puppy-dog. Matthew being somewhat more compliant than a puppy dog, it worked better on him. “This isn’t for me,” she said. “You deserve to know exactly what you’re asking. I know you love me, and the truth is, I love you too, and I love you too much to let you go into this without knowing all you can know about me.”
“I know enough …” he began.
Before he could elaborate, she cut him off. “No, you don’t. You think you know who I am, but you haven’t seen everything, not by a long shot. This is for you, Matthew. Agree to Convergence, or the answer will be no. It will hurt me to say it, and it will destroy you. But, if we do the Convergence ritual, and you see what’s inside me, and you still want to get married, then, I’ll agree. The choice is yours.” Driver turned this over in his mind. It went against any number of his personal philosophies, but he saw no other course. “Agreed then, we’ll have a Convergence. During the Night Watch? 2600 hours.”
“Agreed,” said Eliza. She pocketed the ring. “I’ll keep this until that time.”
“I hope you’ll keep it after that time.” Matthew looked around the bar. Everyone was staring, even Puck, although with his motor control module removed, he really couldn’t help it.
Winter – The Alcazar of General Ziang
As his Thean slave-bot rounded up the last round of stained coffee cups and sticky trays, and as Goldenrod and Toto snored, nested amid mounds of cushions, Ziang wrapped up the Ninth Crusade, in which the thirteen Dark Lords were driven from the galaxy, at enormous hardship, and humanity was both freed and purified. “And at that point,” the General concluded. “We on this planet decided to have no further contact with The Commonwealth. Four thousand years later, your ship showed up.” Keeler was exhausted, too. What he had learned in the previous days was enough to re-write every text on the Crusades, but still amounted to an outline of events. “Isn’t there more?” he asked.
“Of course there is,” the General said. “But I have been exceedingly generous in both my hospitality and the sharing of my knowledge. I have grown curious about your people, and now, I would like to ask questions.”
“By all means,” Keeler said. If there was anything he loved more than listening to someone else talk about history, it was hearing himself talk about anything.
Ziang stood and looked about his chamber. “How did your people manage to sustain their faith? The war ended long ago, and in my experience, human memory is short.”
“Our people believe that we have evolvec spiritually as well and mentally and physically. No one on my planet doubts the existence of a Creator-Sustainer, of a Grand Design, any more that you could expect us to live in caves or have vestigial tails.”
The General scowled. “Perhaps I was not pointed enough. Let me ask this: In the last three thousand years, has any Messiah, an
y Savior come to your world, performed miracles, started a new faith in his name?”
“Not really,” Keeler answered. “We once had a prophet named Sumac…” he cut himself off. The way he said it sounded like he was launching into a bawdy limerick.
Ziang looked at him, with a penetrating, interested gaze. “And this Sumac…, did he perform miracles? Did he start a religion?”
“Maybe and sort of. To this day, there is an Order of Warrior-Monks that follow his teachings. They believe that their purpose is to protect humanity should the Darkness ever return.”
“So, apart from this Sumac, no new religions have been spawned on your world.”
“Variations of the Old Ones seem to service us just fine.”
“You have been alone in the night, thousands and thousands of light years from your home world, but you still follow its religions, why that?”
Keeler’s answer was what he would have told anyone. “When you manage to burn off and boil away all the philosophy, and sophistry, and beastshit solipsism, it all comes down to a single point of logic: The existence of God is the only way the Universe makes any kind of sense.” Ziang nodded, apparently satisfied. “Ever since your kind came to this planet, I have been studying you. Its like seeing my grown-up children, and seeing the lessons we fought so hard in my age to pass down have been taken up, learned, integrated in the human character.”
“You are probably pretty disappointed.”
“Only in those of us who have lived long, but not grown at all,” Ziang said. “We haven’t accomplished anything. We haven’t built this world, except just enough to suit our needs, and our wants.
We haven’t built any new philosophies, we have just endlessly recycled the old ones, the ones we knew.
We fought the Crusades, but we failed to make the lessons of the Crusades part of our culture. As immortals, we have lived without the threat of Final Judgment. It hasn’t made us wiser, or better, it’s only made us selfish, narcissistic and decadent.
“You have done well. Not by your civilizations, which are still modest, or by your technology, which is far short of what we built. However, I know from your grandfather, your pilot, you, even your cat, that your people have a purity of spirit, a sense of your purpose, almost a righteousness like nothing I could have imagined in my time. You are the future of humankind, we are relics of a time passed.” He paused.
“So, basically, you’re saying we’re all right,” Keeler said.
Ziang glared at him. “Don’t belittle what I’m saying. I’ve seen the future in your people. God kept me alive to see that humanity is in good hands, in the hands and on the wings of angels…” he paused. “That sounded trite.”
“A little,” Keeler agreed. “We’re not angels, but thanks for the compliment.” Ziang sat back heavily, and took a long drink of his thick, strong coffee. “There are more interesting things than events of four millennia past. The Admiral and I have been discussing the Aurelians.” Keeler looked toward the ghostly figure of his ancestor, lurking in the background, pretending to study the ceiling. On the other hand, the ceiling was covered with a painted scene of naked virgins frolicking with noble warriors. He might genuinely have been interested in it. “What did he tell you?”
“He described to me the obliteration of all life on the planet Medea, the brutal assault on the planet Bodicéa. He described the pillaging of the planets Hearth and Coriolus. He believes they are evil. Do you share this belief?”
“Absolutely,” Keeler answered.
“Why?”
“The goal of the Aurelians is absolute human subjugation. If they succeed in their goals, all humanity will be either enslaved, or extincted. Clearly, that is evil.”
The General looked unsatisfied. “That is evil in the mundane sense. Whom do they serve, these Aurelians?”
Keeler had to shake his head. “Themselves, I guess.”
The General grunted. “To live life in the service of nothing, is not just a waste, but is also evil. He says you are dithering over whether to declare a Tenth Crusade against them, but they seem to be undertaking a Crusade without waiting for your decision.”
“It is no longer a matter of whether to fight the Aurelians,” Keeler clarified. “That was settled at Bodicéa. The question is how to defeat them.”
“I am gratified that you think this way,” Ziang told him. He then spoke in a tone of undeniable weightiness. “Commander, how would you like to take a long trip by sea?”
“I would rather take a short trip by space ship,” Keeler answered. “Where are we going?”
“In defiance of your esteemed ancestor’s wishes, I wish to give you something, a great gift.” Dead Keeler suddenly appeared next to Keeler’s ear whispering. “Don’t do it. He just wants to get you alone so he can kill you and eat your liver.” He made slurping noises.
Live Keeler’s eyes slid sidewise. “You can do better than that, Dead Man. A long trip by sea, you say?
And where, pray tell, would we be going?”
“Shipwreck.”
Keeler sounded dubious. “A long journey by sea to Shipwreck. You know, if they want to attract tourists, they should change that name. Honey Beach, or some thing, but not Shipwreck.”
“Shipwreck is the oldest town on this planet, not that that means very much. It predates the Exodus from Hibernia. There is not much more there than anywhere else. Some homes, some community buildings… but there is also a library.”
Now, Live Keeler’s ears pricked up. “A library?”
“A library containing a full selection of literature from the Commonwealth Period, including thousands of detailed, contemporaneous historical volumes, the complete history of the Crusades and the Commonwealth, and very probably detailed starmaps to all of the former Commonwealth colonies… and Earth itself.”
Before he had finished speaking, Keeler’s head had rolled backwards, he had begun salivating prodigiously from his open jaw, his eyes had rolled far back into his skull, and he had nearly fainted.
C h a p t e r S i x t e e n
Pegasus – The UnderDecks
“I could get used to having Bellisarius’s Bitch Boy at my service,” John Hunter mused, lounging more-or-less comfortably in the rear of a transport pod. This was the first time he had made legal – or at least, semi-legal – use of Pegasus’s internal transport system.
“Don’t worry, you won’t,” Constantine answered through clenched teeth. He was in the front of the pod.
Revisiting the scene of the crime had only confirmed that Redfire’s assailant was unknown and the weapon he used was also unknown. After Constantine exhausted nearly two hours confirming this data by scanning every millimeter of deck with his instruments, he had agreed with Hunter that they might do better to ask around and see if anyone in the UnderDecks had seen anyone strange. Hunter knew just the man to ask.
Hunter leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head, watching the intraship tubeway markers flash overhead. “On Sapphire, I once owned a ’73 Scorpion, black, with chromium piping, flip top, and curved stinger tail. I used to take it out on the Cerulean highway on the north edge of the Alpha continent, all the way from Electric City to Coolsville. It was a sweet, sweet ride.”
“Unh-huh,” Constantine grunted.
“See, I think one of the major, major, problems with your people is a lack of personal transports.”
“Republic has highly efficient systems of public transportation.”
“Za, right. That’s what you always say. Your cities are compact and densely populated. Private transportation is a waste of resources, except for high officials of the Government who can’t be expected to wait for a transport. It’s not about transportation, Constantine, it’s about personal expression.”
“There are ways to express oneself without conspicuous consumption of finite resources.”
“Name ninety-five of them.”
“Shut up.”
“That’s only one.”
“We’re he
re.”
The transport pod docked. Hunter and Ghost seldom came this far back in the ship. Constantine checked the docking area carefully before letting them out. His two passengers were dressed in nondescript off-duty attire that any ordinary crewmen might have worn. Still, he hoped they met no one, especially no friendly member of the crew who might feel compelled to walk up and make the acquaintance of someone they did not recognize, especially a masked and bearded stranger and his thin, pale girlfriend.
“No one around,” Constantine reported, with some relief. “This better not be a trick, Hunter.”
“I could do better than this, I assure you.”
“I can drop you like a sack of leguminous tubers.”
“And you’d enjoy it, too. That alone is reason enough for me to make sure it never happens.” He led them away from the dock, down the gray-blue, utilitarian corridors of UnderDeck Minus 221, Section 90: U40.
“What are we doing here?” Constantine demanded after following him in silence for sixty meters.
“Like I said, we’re meeting someone who knows what’s going on… over and under decks.” Hunter paused in front of a section hatch. “Wait here.”
“Absolutely not.”
Hunter fixed him with a perturbed look. “You want to scare off my source, go ahead. You won’t get any info.”
Constantine’s perpetual frown deepened. “Then, I will wait here, but I will be monitoring you.”
“Good idea. If I get in trouble, I’ll use a code word. ‘Naked sailors’ ought to get your attention.” Constantine watched Hunter disappear behind the hatch. He looked at Ghost. So pale, he had a sense that even before coming into the UnderDecks, she had not seen sunlight in years. “How the Hell do you put up with him?”
“He’s a good man,” she told him, and cast her eyes toward the deck. “He rescued me when I was in a bad place.” She answered barely above a whisper.
“Is that it?” Constantine asked.
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