The Wreck of the River of Stars

by Michael Flynn

  Corrigan took Akhaturian through the calculations, step-by-step; that is, he held an extended conversation with Ship in its avatar as navigational computer. The Second Officer conceptualized the problem and the neural net did all the donkey work. Akhaturian learned how to calculate velocities and bearings and boron usage. Then, Corrigan let the Least Wrangler run practice problems, taking an imaginary River back and forth among Jupiter, the Trails, and the Leads. Akhaturian rather enjoyed it. “I am the captain!” he declared at one point and Corrigan smiled (or tried to).

  “It takes more than knowing how to point the ship to be a captain,” he said with more than a touch of black choler. “It takes knowing where and why to point it.”

  “Hey,” said Akhaturian when he had returned to the wranglers’ common room, “I bet you don’t know why The Riv’ is shaped like a disk.”

  Rave Evermore was taking apart his belt phone. There was nothing wrong with it. He was just curious how it was put together. “Of course, I know,” he told the Least Wrangler, without looking at him.

  “Oh.”

  Nkieruke Okoye dimmed her screader and looked up. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

  Akhaturian bounced over to her side and, inevitably, deCant joined him there. Unnoticed by any but Okoye, Evermore shot them a look that the Igbo girl recognized as one of envy, though of whom he was envious she was not sure. “It’s because The Riv’ used to be a magnetic sail,” Akhaturian said. “Mr. Corrigan told me. That mast on the foreward hull? It used to anchor a super-loop sixty-four kilometers in diameter, way back when. They made the ship so it would fit inside the shape of the magnetic field the sail created, because the charged particles—you know, the solar wind—they sleet off the field—Mr. Corrigan says that gasses in the field can glow with different colors—but there’s two hot spots—the auroral spots, Mr. Corrigan called them—where the particles curve in, just like on Jupiter—and on Earth too I suppose—and they didn’t want any part of the ship to sit in the hot spots or the ‘vanilla’ belts. That’s why the mast is only a couple hundred meters long. So the ship stays well inside.”

  Okoye considered that this entire pronouncement had been delivered without a second intake of breath and smiled at the lad. “That’s very interesting,” she said, and did not correct his pronunciation of “Van Allen belts.” DeCant beamed. “Isn’t Ivar smart?” she asked the sidereal universe.

  Afterwards, Evermore approached Okoye and asked her if what the boy had said was true and, on being told that it was, nodded sagely. “Yah,” he said, “that’s what I would have guessed, but you’ve been on board more years than the rest of us. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

  Okoye smiled at him too—which was all that Evermore had really wanted—and neither did she correct him on his own misapprehension.

  The Second Wrangler

  Bhatterji saw Raphael Evermore in the machine shop on third watch assembling a tool of some sort and he paused to watch the boy at work from the entryway. The wrangler’s features were stilled in a picture of intent concentration, almost as if he had been caught in a portrait digigraph. His eyes squinted as he focused on the work object; and his lips were pursed and slightly distended. Dark hair, just growing back, shadowed Evermore’s skull and framed features as fine and as delicate as carved ivory. Never had his comeliness beckoned the engineer more. Lissome and graceful of limb, and with a natural talent at the omnitool…Could there ever have been a more fortunate match? It lacked only the one essential element of Evermore’s consent.

  That had been withheld, and withheld in no uncertain terms; but Bhatterji, to whom consent mattered a great deal, could not turn his emotions off quite so easily; and so his eyes often caressed the young man whenever their paths crossed.

  And yet it was not only for the boy’s beauty that Bhatterji paused in the hatchway to watch; for the piece he was building was beautiful too; not in the superficial sense of brightwork or polish, but in its shape and substance and in the way it all fit together so perfectly. It was the sort of beauty that engineers knew, and it had (were engineers as facile with words as with widgets) as much of poetry in it as any sunset or lover’s kiss.

  Evermore noticed him suddenly and pushed away from the omnitool with a wary look. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  You, Bhatterji thought, but for once he did not voice his thoughts. He knew when a suit was lost. “What are you working on?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  The hostility grieved Bhatterji and he wondered, naively, why, if the two of them could not be lovers, they could not simply be friends. “You’re using my equipment and my tools and my materials,” he pointed out in what he thought was a reasonable tone. “I was just curious.”

  “I don’t like people sneaking up and watching me.” This was not entirely true. He would not have minded one bit had it been Okoye—or deCant, or even Miko. Their gazes felt different. Perhaps another sort of photon was involved.

  “I was admiring your work.”

  “You were admiring more than that.”

  Bhatterji did not deny it, because it was not untrue. Instead, he said, “Does it bother you to be attractive?”

  “Don’t come near me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I don’t like you looking at me.”

  Bhatterji nodded. “What should I do, pluck out my eyes? Does Okoye like it when you look at her?”

  Evermore tilted his chin. “That’s different. That’s natural. That—”

  “—does not answer my question.”

  Evermore thrust his face forward. “I would never do anything to hurt her.”

  Bhatterji’s patient silence was sufficient indication that the question remained unanswered, and Evermore looked away and muttered, “She’s never said anything to object.”

  “She never says much of anything,” Bhatterji pointed out.

  It was Evermore’s bad luck that of the three girls close to his own age, one was a pledged virgin, one was betrothed, and the third lusted for older men. It defied probability theory to drill so many dry holes, given that, in a manner of speaking, he had not drilled any holes at all. He was of an age when the mere attention of any girl would have brought undiluted joy, yet he genuinely considered ’Kiru to be the smartest and the prettiest of the three. Now, Twenty-four might actually be prettier by some measures, but her rough and froward ways put him off; and Miko might be smarter (again, by some meaures), but he was more than a little frightened of the engineer’s mate. Thus, while he sometimes thought about the other two when he closed his eyes at night, it was Okoye he saw most often—for even in his fantasies he was something of a realist.

  None of this would he ever say to the likes of Ramakrishnan Bhatterji, nor for that matter to ’Kiru Okoye. Yet Bhatterji needed no confirmation when lust was the topic and he warned the boy, “Remember that she is pledged.”

  The reminder, dropped on the countertop of Evermore’s heart, had the ring of accusation. “I know that,” he said. “I know that. What do you think I am?”

  “A young man.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment while Bhatterji pondered his regrets and Evermore wondered from which end the engineer had meant his last remark. He knew what Okoye did in his dreams; he was terrified at what he might do in Bhatterji’s. At last, Bhatterji said, “I only asked what you were building,” and Evermore, recognizing a bid to end an uncomfortable encounter, said, “Only a practice piece. You know. Something I get to fold and drill and weld and…”

  “…practice every other verb in the tool kit.” Bhatterji laughed and Evermore found that he could laugh with him. But when the engineer had gone and Evermore fishtailed to reposition the piece in the fixture, he wondered too what the purpose was of the device that Ratline had given him to make.

  Corrigan had begun a baseline inspection and gap analysis of all the equipment and materials that would be needed to put at least one sail on the mast: the braiders an
d winders and splicers; the kickers and the tommy rolls; the shroud motors around the rim; the cat-line motors in the loft. He was an hour or so into this effort and lost in a warm haze of data acquisition when Satterwaithe tracked him down and put a sock in him. This was the sort of thing that could be delegated, she pointed out. One needn’t be a sailor to validate software or to function-test equipment. Corrigan’s talents would be more usefully engaged in measurement and calibration, which did require specialized knowledge of superconducting alloys, quenching levels, hoop stress and the like. All this was couched in subordinate tones. Don’t you think that…? Wouldn’t it be better if…? But Corrigan knew an order when he heard one. In her more dyspeptic moods, he knew, the sailing master dispensed with the question marks.

  Subsequently, he called Okoye and The Lotus Jewel to his quarters and assigned them to the gap analysis as if it had been his very own initiative.

  “Verify that the necessary equipments on this list still function,” Corrigan told them, handing The Lotus Jewel a clipscreen. “Whatever doesn’t work, red tag it for Ratline or me to look at.” Being a methodical man, he had developed minimum cut sets on the fault trees and identified those choke points where the lack of a single asset or group of assets would make sail deployment undoable. Unlike Bhatterji, Corrigan knew that taking pains at the front end would often save time at the back; although (also unlike Bhatterji) he did not realize that such foreknowledge could be a curse as well. A man who anticipates every obstacle may well despair, while a man who does not may improvise success.

  “I can fix some of the malfs,” Okoye said, “or ask Evermore to help.” But Corrigan shook his head.

  “There’s no point to repairing some units if we don’t have others we need. Give the whole list a once-through, then we’ll make a go/no-go decision. And don’t tell Evermore, either, or anyone else. We haven’t decided if the project is doable, so we don’t want to raise hopes.” Corrigan wanted the two young women to believe that excuse as earnestly as he wanted to believe it himself.

  Which they did not. They knew perfectly well that the project was clandestine for other reasons, but The Lotus Jewel was in it to please her lover and Okoye because she loved the lore of sails. So they carried out their survey in the quiet hours, while Gorgas slept the innocent sleep of the ill-informed.

  At first, The Lotus Jewel was quite excited and she flew from machine to machine, an easy feat in free fall. But the novelty palled and it was the novelty that had captured her. “This is boring,” she said when, after several hours, the two progressed from the Long Room to the old Sail Prep room.

  Okoye shook her head and wondered at the older woman. How could it be boring? They were unfurling the Great Sail! Actually, they were running down a checklist as prelude to a make-or-mend decision, but attitude is all.

  In her childhood, ’Kiru Okoye had devoured stories of the romance of sails. Coke Johnson and the Sandstorm of ’69. The tragic fate of the looper Castle King. The pirate ship, Empty Sail. The desperate last days of the quattro City of Halifax. The skies had been filled with heroes then. She could not imagine Gorgas (or any of the officers) crying, “Fly or die!” as Lavender Morganfree had cried when Jupiter’s swelling magfield threatened to engulf the troika Iridium Rose. Hoist that sail and kick those amps!

  The Lotus Jewel did not understand Okoye any more than the Igbo girl understood the sysop. She thought ’Kiru a dull stick, but that was because she confused romance with the Grail and not with the Quest. She had thought that unfurling the sail would be an exciting moment and had not thought much on all the moments that must precede it.

  That Okoye was such a quiet girl did not help. The Lotus Jewel, among her many confusions, confused reserve with melancholy. “Unbutton, ’Kiru,” she would say when the girl double-checked the Number Four Braider just in case she had missed something, and she would tell a little story or a joke because she could not bear the thought of such a large solemnity in such a small body.

  Okoye, for her part, smiled at the joke (because it really was rather funny) and wondered how a woman so insistently friendly could be so desperately unhappy. The sysop was beautiful—by conventional measures the most beautiful aboard—and everyone on board enjoyed her company. She seized every day as if it were a shining moment, and of course that was the problem, although Okoye did not realize it then. For how can a moment shine, unless the rest of life is dark?

  “You talk to yourself sometimes,” The Lotus Jewel said to her. “Did you know you did that? You really shouldn’t. People might think you were, you know, ‘funny.’”

  Okoye disliked personal revelations, and one’s chi was a very personal thing indeed. Christians that she knew sometimes mentioned “guardian angels,” but they neither spoke to them nor seem to realize that they might sometimes be “fallen angels.” Okoye did not believe in angels, fallen or not, but she did believe in her chi because when she spoke to it, it sometimes spoke back.

  “You don’t talk very much, do you?” The Lotus Jewel persisted.

  Okoye smiled apologetically and shook her head.

  “Some people think you’re snobbish. But I think you’re just shy. You really need to break out of your shell.”

  Okoye was not sure that qualified as a “need,” but when The Lotus Jewel suggested they end the shift in the common room, Okoye found compliance easier than resistance.

  When they entered the commons in the small hours, they found it empty of all life save Rave Evermore. The Second Wrangler, having worked late on Ratline’s strange tool, was slowly putting himself around the outside of a sandwich.

  “It’s party time!” the sysop cried, to Okoye’s intense embarrassment. Evermore broke into a great smile. “I’m ready!” he answered, without even swallowing.

  Okoye understood that he was ready in a great many ways. The hungers of sixteen-year-old boys did not require telepathy to discern. Okoye resigned herself to a longer night than she had intended, for if she retired now, Rave would read significance into it; and, believing he had been deliberately left alone with The Lotus Jewel, might try to press his eagerness on the older woman. One of two things might happen then and both of them were bad.

  “What are you two doing up so late?” Rave asked.

  “Hey,” said The Lotus Jewel, “this space is flat. Where’s the music?” And coasting over to the entertainment bank, she dialed up a menu. “I think deft kicks, don’t you?”

  Okoye, who had no idea what “deft” was—a musical style, she supposed—agreed that it was indeed “kick” to listen to. Rave was not supposed to know about Plan B; so although The Lotus Jewel would have started some music even had she found herself alone in the room, she was clearly evading the boy’s question.

  The evasion was too obvious. A thoughtful look came over Evermore and his eyes danced speculatively between Okoye and The Lotus Jewel. That boy was quick. Even Ratline admitted it, and the cargo master was niggardly with his praise. Give Evermore enough dots and he could connect them, although there was no telling what picture he would come up with in the end.

  “Corrigan wanted me to run an inventory,” she said, which had the advantage of being true, “and The Lotus Jewel helped me,” which was also true—the entirety demonstrating how the sum of two truths could equal alie.

  “Yah, and I got busywork from the Rat,” Evermore agreed with conspiratorial resignation. “He wants me to fab some sort of gizz for him and he wants the kids to shift the cargo around the hold—again.”

  Okoye agreed that Ratline was a hard man. She knew that the realignment of the cargo was in the expectation of receiving thrust through the mast, but that the task was necessary did not reduce the cargo master’s Rockwell number.

  The Lotus Jewel rejoined them, ducking and flexing in a manner that Okoye supposed was “deft”—at least the motions were in time to the music—and the Raven’s attention was diverted from Ratline’s motives by the oscillations consequent to those moves.

  “I’m trying to ge
t our little ’Kiru to unbutton,” The Lotus Jewel told him, handing the both of them a fruit bomb.

  “I’ll help,” Rave said, reaching a mischievous hand toward Okoye’s coverall. It was only a joke. He only half-meant it; but he meant the wrong half. Okoye responded with the posture that the sisterhood called The Rock; and Rave’s grin faded into confusion. “Sorry,” he muttered as he pulled away.

  If he had had a brother on one side or the other, Evermore might have had a different perspective; but he had been bracketed by sisters coming and going. It was hard to know what was right. He believed that Okoye liked him. She sometimes looked at him when she thought he did not see. Did that mean that he occupied her thoughts as densely as she inhabited his? Why, the girl had all but moved into his libido and set up housekeeping! He wondered whether her pledge of virginity was simply a rampart he was meant to assault. She might only be waiting to surrender. His father had often told him that—that women had desires as strong as men—and his mother, although at times giving her husband a hooded look, had never contradicted him. Yet, the one time Evermore had applied the lesson (and that had involved Beth-Lynn, the neighbor’s girl) it had not turned out at all well. There had been giggles and revelations in the garage—he could still smell the scents of rubber and battery acid overwhelming the powder and rosewater odor of the girl herself—but when he tied to do what she wanted, she cried and then called out and later said that she had not wanted it at all. He had gotten a whipping from his father and threats from hers. His mother had looked on him with a kind of empty sorrow and his sisters with utter horror.

  After that, nothing was left but to run away. There had been an ugly night spent in wary vigil at the maglev station, and another almost as bad in a cardboard tent near Port Phoenix, and the days that had fallen between had been no more beautiful. He had made his way to the skyport with the vague notion of stowing away and running off to space. There were morphies about boys who did that (although they always skipped the parts about nights in maglev stations). Evan Hand had found him lurking behind some luggage carts on the apron, and had taken him aboard the LEO Shuttle with him. Evermore had thought it passing strange that a ship’s captain should be wandering about the tarmac like that, almost as if he had been hunting for something he had lost.