“In local years… forty, fifty maybe.” Keeler didn’t have a clue, but he had sense of how the time had been increasing with each world Pegasus had visited, twenty at Meridian, thirty at Independence. He extrapolated.
“Barely an afternoon on my time scale,” the General said. “Your people are good, but you do not know how to fight. I can not leave with your Pegasus, a Keeler and a Ziang on the same ship has never been…
portentous.”
As if to underscore the assertion, there was a sound of splintering wood as something in the back of the ship cracked, and icy fingers of wind penetrated the cabin.
Ziang continued. “But, perhaps, when you return, there will be a place on one of your ships for a very old General who wishes to fight on the side of good one last time.”
“If you leave this planet, you’ll die,” Keeler told him. As if to remind him that their immortality was conditional in any case, a blinding sheet of lightning split the sea beside the ship, and was followed with ear-cracking thunder.
Ziang shook his head. “If I can fight this new evil, then the thousands of years I’ve been kept alive will have some purpose.”
Pegasus – Pieta’s Quarters
“My real name… or I should say, my given name, was Eric Alkema,” David Alkema told Pieta. “David was my older brother. The minimum age, on my planet, for signing up for the Odyssey Project was sixteen. I was four years too young, but I wanted to go more than anything, and I couldn’t wait. I put my older brother’s name into the lottery. I was ecstatic when my brother’s name was on the first draw. I knew he could take me with him. When, he said he did not want to leave Sapphire, I was destroyed. I actually cried. And when that didn’t work, I wiped the tears from my cheek and said, ‘Okay, then, give me your Odyssey Project Identity card.’”
“What did your parents say?”
David grinned. “I think my mom’s exact words were…” he began to shout, “Is this how I raised you, You didn’t really think you were going to get away with this?” It was a fair rendering of his mother’s voice, pitched at the edge of hysteria.
“You signed up for the Odyssey Project using your brother’s identity, and you thought we wouldn’t find out? You think the Republickers aren’t going to use every biometric they have to figure out who you really are? Is this how your father and I raised you. If you’re going to do this, do it right, for Sumac’s sake. Find a really good cybernetic intruder and get set up inside the system – inside the system!! – Didn’t I teach you anything?” Pieta was confused. “She supported you?”
“Meredith Burning-Rainbow Alkema was, in the words of everyone in Josh-Nation who crossed her path, a formidable woman. She would have fitted in very well on your planet. The next day, she set me up with a black and white cat named Holstein. Holstein altered every file he could to make sure no one would doubt that the recruit who showed up on Republic was David Alkema, and not his little brother Eric.
Holstein claimed his changes would be completely unidentifiable and untraceable, but you know how cats are.”
“They never caught you?” Pieta asked incredulously.
“I didn’t have any real problems until I got to Republic, the reception cell for Odyssey Project Training. Everybody there was staring at me. I almost drenched myself when I got to the Intake Area. The adminicrat gave me a look of pure death, and I know she didn’t believe I was old enough. She did a double biometric scan on me, quintuple checked my identity card.”
“What were you going to say if she challenged you?”
“That I had a childhood bout with Bonesaw’s disease and my growth was delayed. Mom’s idea, Holstein put it in the file. But I didn’t expect her to challenge me. You have to understand, Republickers are trained from infancy to trust the system, trust the data. If my file said I was sixteen, she had to believe it.
“When we got to the dorms. They put me in with other guys they thought were my age. I was in a suite with three other guys, two Republickers and another Sapphirean. The Sapphirean, his name was Ranaroundthespaceport High Sunday, Ran for short. He didn’t make it through the first quarter. Three fourths of the people who began the training either never finished, or didn’t get a ship posting.
“Every once in a while, somebody asked how old I was, and I told them ‘sixteen’ and they said I didn’t look sixteen and I told them I couldn’t help it.’ After a while, they lost interest. I couldn’t do much socially, so I had a lot of time to study, and train.”
“Did you miss your home?” Pieta asked.
“More than I ever thought possible,” Alkema conceded. “Republic was such a bleak planet. You probably can’t imagine it. I mean, where people lived, it was a lot like this ship, in the cities. Outside the cities, it was bare rocks and lichen. I went from living in one of the most beautiful places of my planet to…
it was like moving from a beautiful garden into a parking garage.”
“A parking garage? What is that?”
“Like a hangar for personal transport pods, but that’s not important right now … Some nights, I honestly cried myself to sleep. More than anything, I was afraid I would fail and get sent back, and never have a chance again. I spent my thirteenth birthday in an ice cave on the planet Archon… which is basically this huge ball of ice in the Republic system. It has double normal gravity, and twelve of us had to survive for twenty-one days on the surface, with limited food, water, heaters, and oxygen. It was survival training. The only way to survive, is to totally work together and depend on your team. I led my team to a volcanic vent, marching across glass ice for four days, then deep underground. I figured out a way to harness the heat to make air. It was great. It was like I was the leader… like everyone was depending on me, turning to me.
“Four people on our team didn’t make it. They didn’t die, they just couldn’t deal. And called for extraction. I took it on myself to lead each one to the surface, to the extraction point. One of them was so mad… so jealous… I just knew she was going to sell me out.
“By the time we were extracted, as a team, I had severe frostbite. Actually, we all did, but mine was the worst, because I had always been the one to take the washouts to the surface, and I had been on point the whole time. We had to get into this healing bath, hot water and healing knitters, completely naked.
You know, at thirteen, being naked in front of all those people was scarier than the whole three weeks on the ice-planet.
“I finished my primary training. I signed on for Pegasus. Then went into specialized training on the ship. I took both Operations and Tactical. Usually, people only take one, but I took both, and all but worked myself to exhaustion. They were scrutinizing me, the Odyssey Project Directors, because one of the washouts from Archon told them I was just a kid, and I had no reason to be there.
“So, I had to work twice as hard to finish both programs, and twice as hard as that so no one would question my being there. Finally, it was over. I wasn’t even halfway to fifteen when we left the systems.
So, basically, when I met you, I was sixteen years old… eight years old by your planet’s orbit.”
“So, you really weren’t that much older than me,” Pieta said.
“Za, and that means, I’m even younger than you than you thought. You’ve lived a whole lifetime more than me. Do you still want to marry me?”
“Yes… za, a thousand times over. I still want to marry you. Even more.” She kissed him repeatedly, her words emerging between pecks. “If you were that much of a man at thirteen … and you’re the man you are now at eighteen… I want to make sure I’m around to see what kind of man you become later…
and what kind of …father you’re going to be to the … lots and lots and lots of babies I’m going to make for you.”
He took her in close in his arms, and they wrapped themselves in one another. Around them, a warm aura of love burned so brightly, it almost gave off visible light.
Pegasus – Hangar Bay 19
Prudence par
ked in the Hangar Bay. The hatch opened, and two figures in flight togs walked through it.
Matthew and Trajan were quite close in height, with Trajan’s eyes meeting Matthew’s nose when they stood at level ground. They walked more stiffly than even most Republickers, but there was an easy manner developing between mentor and protégé, that made them seem more natural together than either was on his own.
“You’re getting good,” Matthew told Trajan.
“Thank you,” Trajan said, almost grinning and embarrassed. Praise from Matthew meant a lot to him.
“Your final approach was perfect. Next time, I’ll let you take it all the way in.”
“Thank you,” Trajan said again. “Um, after the post-flight review, would you like to get some food with me…maybe some pizza.”
Matthew smiled shyly. “I was going to ask if we could do post-flight tomorrow morning. There’s something I have to do right now.”
Trajan pulled in his lips, disappointed, almost seeming hurt. “All right, I guess tomorrow will be okay. What do you have to do?”
“I asked Eliza Jane to marry me,” Matthew said. He would not admit to Trajan that he was about to undergo the Convergence ritual, Trajan would not have approved. “I’m going to meet her in her quarters and she’s going to give me her answer.”
Trajan’s mouth formed an ‘O.’ He did not know what to say at first, but at last he managed a
“Congratulations.”
“She hasn’t agreed yet.”
“I’m sure she will. Who did you choose for your summoner?”
“I decided to ask her myself. I’m not an Iestan, and … I just couldn’t think of who else to ask besides Eddie Roebuck, and I wasn’t about to ask him.”
Trajan nodded, soberly.
“If she was going to say ‘aye,’ don’t you think she would have said so right away.”
“Things with Eliza are never uncomplicated,” Matthew shrugged. “It’s the way she is.”
“Is that why you love her? Because she’s complicated?”
Matthew looked into the boy’s eyes, and the utter honesty in them, and could not help feeling he was being less than honest when he answered, “It’s a part of her, and I love the whole of her, I guess have to love that part, too.”
“Good luck,” said Trajan, half-heartedly.
After a few parting words, Matthew walked on from the hangar.
When he had gone, Trajan looked back toward the ship. He told himself he had no right to be jealous, to begrudge Matthew his happiness or resent Eliza for taking away one of the few friends he had on the ship. Matthew and David, and that was about it. David Alkema would probably be marrying Pieta soon.
Then, where would he be?
He no longer felt like eating. The only thing he thought he might want to do is run flight simulations, but flight technicians were already doing post-flight checks on Prudence. He checked the flight roster and saw that Basil ship, was in an adjacent bay.
It took only a few minutes to cross over, using one of the landing bay bridges. Crossing these bridges was actually one of Trajan’s secret joys. From the top of the bridge, he could see most all of the landing bay, and the dozens of Aves nesting there, each in its own pool of light. He now saw them as Matthew Driver did. The ships were so proud, and so graceful, and he took satisfaction in knowing he was part of them, part of this whole organization.
Evening was on, and the crew shift was minimal. Only a few technicians and automechs were around. He encountered no one before descending the bridge on the other side, and walked across the hangar to Basil.
He touched the hatch opener, but nothing happened. He tried again, but the hatch refused to open. He pulled the pad to the side to get at the manual over-ride people. It had not occurred for him to ask why the ship was inaccessible when suddenly the hatch slid open.
He turned to enter, and saw Max Jordan standing in the open hatch. “What do you want?” Max demanded.
Trajan was unable to answer immediately because he was too completely shocked by Max’s appearance. His eyes were red, and stood out from his pale face like bloodstains on an old sheet. His longish red hair was alternately matted to his head, sticking up in unruly screws, and hanging in strings around the back of his neck. The hand that rested on the hatchway showed nails that had been chewed bloody, and was shaking. He was dressed in flight togs, like Trajan, but they hung from him like they were three sizes too big. “What do you want?” he repeated loudly.
“I was going to run some practice simulations before the exam,” Trajan answered.
“What good will that do. You’re a terrible pilot. You’ll never get into Flight Core without your mater’s help, and even if you do, you’ll just end up crashing your ship on some planet or getting blown up by the Aurelians.”
Trajan flashed red. “Max, go stick your head in a pork-beast.” His voice shook as he said it.
“Just go away,” Max said, in a dead, dead voice. “Nobody wants you around. Can’t you understand that?”
“I’m going to do a flight simulation,” Trajan tried to push his way into the ship, but Max blocked him.
He tried to shove Max aside, and suddenly took a round-house punch to the side of his head.
Acting on instinct alone, he plowed into Max, catching him in the midsection and pressing him back into the ship. Max sprang back with a knee to the groin and an elbow in the face. Trajan felt his lip split open, and swung for Max’s face but managed only a glancing blow. He swung again, and made a better connection, but Max grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed his head against Basil’s hull once, then twice. As the bay swung around him, turning gray, Trajan managed a half-powered punch at Max’s face, before a third slam against the hull stole his consciousness.
C h a p t e r N i n e t e e n
Winter — Somewhere
And Redfire rose again.
This time, it was Sam who was waiting for him. Redfire held out his hand again, and as Max had done before, Sam refused it, shaking his head. “Not that way. If you want to see the future,” Sam told him. “You’re going to have kill me.
Max is already dead.”
Sam gestured down to where Max lay. The sight of the body filled him with horror. It was nothing more than a skeleton and rags, something you might find at the bottom of an old ruin after bacteria had had several hundred years to clean the bones.
Sam looked at him again, offering himself, with neither joy nor regret. “Come on. Do you want to see what happens if you join her, or not?”
“I would never do that.”
Sam shook his head. “You’ve thought about it. You really, really have. You think you can get inside without becoming a part of them, but you really can’t. You don’t want to help the Aurelians, but you’re dying to know what they really are. I can show you what they really are.”
Sam bowed himself, offering Redfire the back of his neck. Redfire knelt over the boy and kissed him. He felt cold metal plunging into the space where the boy’s head met his neck. Sam fell without a sound next to Max. Redfire had a nanosecond to feel infinite grief and horror, before Sam’s brain juice fired his blood.
The sensation this time was of being carried upward by a violent, irresistible force, — like a tornado – up, up, and away.
Winter and Pegasus flashed by and diminished to nothing. He was shooting through the stars a million times faster than the speed of light, Worlds Without End rushed by him. He sensed he was somehow leaving reality itself, passing through a mirror into some other set of dimensions, to Aurelia, which was not so much another place, but another reality, trying to pull the strings of this one.
And he became Aurelian, and he saw who the Aurelians really were.
The Hanged Man hung upside down by one leg in a tank of warm, viscous liquid. His mind was the central processing unit of a planet-sized ship, called The World. He was plotting a course through the elaborate gravity of a double star system, the World-Ship powered by The Sun that burned at its ce
nter. Far and away ahead, The Moon and The
Star, smaller versions of the great world-ship, guided its course through the system, past the gas giants and the ringed worlds to the warm, wet, rocky terrestrial planets of the interior.
From his viewpoint in The Tower, which ran through the major axis of the world ship for 1,000 kilometers, Redfire would be The Chariot (but it was not him and it never would be. He would never be of the Arcana, he would never be in the Echelon. (This was the great lie? of The Lovers, who, now, in the overture of a great conquest, lay together surrounded by naked Cups, lovingly caressing one another’s voluptuous bodies in a ritual to bring forth erotic energy.) Even as The
Chariot, he was without will of his own, merely a vehicle drive by the ambitions of others. The whip that was cracked over his shoulder was held in the hands of The Devil, whom the Arcana did not acknowledge but could not escape.
<
The great World-Ship, drove into the system, met first by a phalanx of small ships with powerful guns. Redfire did not recognize their design. It was rare for the Aurelians to mount a frontal assault, but now they had come across a world that was impervious to their usual methods of conquest, that refused to be seduced, pacified, and subjugated; a world that was fighting back, however briefly
He of the Arcana who was called Strength, rested each hand on the head of a sword, the picture of tremendous force held in place by sheer will. His face was smooth, his hair was black and stars glistened in it. “Destroy them,” he sang.
Swords flew from the great world-ship and cut the defenders to pieces. It was over quickly.
Redfire looked out over the planet they approached, its jewelline blue oceans, and saw two of its continents were shaped like birds, one in flight, one just about to land. The Magus raised his wand and drew circles around the major cities, Corvallis, New Cleveland, New Halifax, Matthias, New Tenochtitlàn, Kandor…
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