Hooded Swan, Book I: Halcyon Drift

by Brian Stableford

  He stopped, and steadied. The intensity drained out of him.

  I just couldn’t say anything to him. Nothing at all. To myself, I said that he was insane. That he was a real, genuine, authentic mad scientist.

  He means it, said the wind.

  Oh sure. He means it. He’s got the grandest delusions of grandeur in the galaxy.

  You’ve got a sterile mind, said the wind. Can’t you understand what he says? Can’t you appreciate what he wants?

  To hell with his fancy dreams, I replied. That’s just so much junk. I don’t give a damn for superminds and the harmonisation of human and alien thought. That’s just froth—empty air. What I care about is what it’s making him do to me—to the ship and all who sail in her. I don’t care how philosophically elegant or aesthetically appealing his spiel might be. I don’t care if you fall in love with his stupid dreams. I care about my life and the fact that he doesn’t. He owns me, remember. He bought me because he needed me, and he couldn’t afford to let me have ideas of my own. That’s what scares me. That’s his madness.

  You have a very dull mind, Grainger, said the wind. Constantly preoccupied with trivial matters. You have no soul.

  With that parting sally, the wind retired gracefully into implacable silence.

  Meanwhile, back with the mindless ephemera, delArco was bidding his fond farewells. This task was made no easier by virtue of the fact that he and Johnny were supporting Rothgar, who appeared suddenly to have become too heavy for his legs, and who was muttering angrily to himself. Eve was fluttering around them like a helpless moth, getting in their way.

  I retreated, leaving dignified thanks floating behind me. I helped the others support Rothgar and we descended in the elevator.

  “Did you know,” I remarked conversationally, “that our employer is completely and utterly mad?”

  “I know,” said delArco.

  I was astonished by his perspicacity. “So why do you work for him?”

  “Because he pays me. He’s not harmful or dangerous. He just has some strange—and rather quaint—notions. Our business is flying a ship. I don’t see how the two are incompatible.” I cancelled the re-evaluation of his perspicacity. He was still an idiot.

  “Sometimes,” I said, “I have the feeling that fate is not on my side. Not only that, but it also has a grudge against me.”

  DelArco laughed briefly. “It’s you that has the grudge,” he said.

  Amen, added the wind.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The next morning I slept.

  During the afternoon, delArco had to go see Charlot to collate some information and try to establish a sensible basis for our attempt on the Lost Star. Johnny and Rothgar were refluxing the drive, but I had nothing at all to do—there was no point in trying to make up some sort of excuse for a flight plan. You can’t make plans to deal with the likes of the Halcyon Drift.

  I took the opportunity to relax for a while—it was the last chance I’d get for a week or more. In the evening, I met Eve for a drink in the port’s showpiece—a high tower with a bubble of glass set on top from which tourists could get a great view of the Drift. You also got a great view of the squalid area back of the central port where the locals conducted whatever trivial business had brought them to the rim. Much more to my liking was the vast expanse of the spacefield which stretched for ten or twelve miles away to the south, ribboned with truckways and pockmarked with private hangars and bay gantries. The Hooded Swan was a long way off, closeted by high fencing and protected by booms slung across the approaches. But she was a tall ship, and I knew her well enough to visualise her lines and compare her to the ranks of ramrods, dirt-trackers and p-shifters which were parked closer to the tower. The other mass-relaxers dwarfed her with their massive, six- or eight-shielded hulls, but they were just big and ugly. She was more or less of a size with the lighter p-shifters and the bigger yachts, and she looked a little uncomfortable compared to their silky, polished skins. But I knew how frail and false that mirror-brightness was.

  I let my eyes dwell on the alien ships, all shapes and sizes of them, which were scattered all over the tarpol. They were mostly the dimensional hoppers of free traders, but there were a few dead slow dredgers which made their living on extended jaunts into the quieter parts of the Drift, trawling the sleeping dust-clouds and sorting out anything of any value—ore, organics, gemstones, anamorphosed matter. They wholesaled their collections maybe twice a year on Hallsthammer. It wasn’t much of a living, considering the dangers inherent in the Drift work, but it kept the ships flying and the crews fed. A lot of spacers asked a little more than that, though humans as a rule are either too ambitious or too quarrelsome. We are basically a vain and aggressive people.

  I searched briefly for Alachakh’s Hymnia, but remembered that he now used the name on a different ship, and that I wouldn’t recognise her.

  Eve looked at the sky, not at the ships. Her fascinated stare betrayed the fact that she hadn’t been in space more than a few days. Even casual tourists are careful to lose the open expression of cosmic astonishment as soon as they can. Nobody likes to be labelled a dirt-grubber in a galactic age.

  Hallsthammer’s sun is a weak red giant which never cleared the horizon in these latitudes by more than a handspan or so. The northern sky was always ruddy with half-light, sprinkled with a few luminous clouds. The tangled mass of the Drift lurked higher, crouching behind the red haze like a vast, crippled spider, suspended on a tenuous web of starlight.

  The Drift is technically a dark nebula, because of its occluding clouds of dust—in the inner wheel, people see it as a dark blot obscuring the stars behind it. But it contains a good number of stars within its body which retain visible magnitudes on Hallsthammer and a few neighbour worlds. So the dark nebula is quite bright and beautiful—if you like that sort of thing—at close range. The light is refracted and distorted by the nebular corpus, and it shines all kinds of colours, and changes its face constantly. Even at high noon it has an angry, sullen glow which rivals the sunlight. The perennial ebb and flow of its contortive currents make it hard to look at for long—the star-storms are always blasting matter back and forth in time, and from the light-dense core to the thin shell, and sparks flare and die all the time, each one burning a blur into your sight.

  “It looks terrible,” she said. “Like a great hand with crippled fingers that keep clutching and coiling.”

  “That’s what it feels like too,” I told her. “Fingers always plucking at your skin, poking into your shields. A constant rain of dust and radiation. It fumbles ships to pieces like a child pulling apart a daddy-longlegs while trying to hold it still.”

  “And yet they give it a name which suggests a more pleasant disposition,” she commented, her lips forming the word “Halcyon” as though she were tasting its softness.

  “Rothgar’s theory of names,” I said. “Appease the dragons, make love to the ships, insult dead worlds, and compliment live ones.”

  “How very poetic,” purred a new voice, from behind us.

  “Alachakh,” I said, turning quickly and reaching out to touch him. We gripped hands hard, and placed our free hands on each other’s shoulders. “I hoped you’d find me.” I said. “I asked about you, but no one knew who you were at the port. You know how it is. You look very prosperous.”

  He plucked modestly at his clothing, which was expensively cut and perfectly proportioned, not spacer stuff at all.

  “They force it upon me,” he explained. “They like to deal with men who look like themselves. I have not your pride. I bow to them and they make me a rich man.” He was being polite. Alachakh was a proud man—he had a great deal to be proud of. The Khor-monsa were smaller, on average, than the human race, but Alachakh was a remarkable physical specimen and matched my height, although he was far from my weight. He looked burly, his sleek skin stood a long way from his bones, but his flesh was far less dense than human flesh.

  The Khormon face is flat, the olfactory org
an pushed back into a slit-like cavity and the eyes tilted in an odd manner. Perhaps the oddest feature—by human standards—is the string of sonic receptors circling the skull like a headband—small, rigid plates suspended at various angles in a flexible neuronic membrane. Khormons are far more sensitive to vibrations over a far wider scale than humans. But the Khormon is also far more vulnerable to physical attack by virtue of the sensory apparatus conferring this ability. A Khormon skull is extraordinarily amenable to fracture. By necessity, they are a peaceful people. They are proud of their peacefulness and their friendliness. Their mingling of statutory pride and hypocritical politeness leads the men of many other races to profess distaste for their ways and their persons. Personally, I like the Khor-monsa. But then, I do not like humans.

  I introduced Alachakh to Eve Lapthorn.

  “I knew your brother very well,” he told her. “I was very sorry to hear of his death. I was very happy at the same time, though, when I learned that you”—he addressed himself to me now, of course—“had survived and been returned to civilisation.” His voice was very quiet, and whirred softly. His native language consisted of little more than constant whirring, but such was the sensitivity of Khormon sound orientation that he could produce almost any native language with perfect fluency. He had made it his business to learn at least a dozen languages—three of them human—for the purposes of politeness. The fact that the Khor-monsa are the great linguists of the galaxy was no doubt the crucial fact determining that they should combine with the New Alexandrians in the pilot project for the integration of racial identities.

  “Rothgar told me that you have a new ship,” I said.

  “And you too,” he said. “A ship we have talked about for some time here on Hallsthammer. She has a reputation already.”

  “Part of the credit belongs to the Khor-monsa,” I told him. “You know about the scheme of which she is a part?”

  “I know. But I am too old to appreciate the grandness of the plan. To me, she is only a ship. I am entrenched in the past, and I cannot look to the future as you might.” His manner was sober, and I knew that this was a matter of great import. Khormons do not fade away into old age and declining health. They have recognisable limits, and they know them well.

  “I wonder that there are no Khor-monsa involved in the building and operation of the ship,” I said. “It would seem a logical thing to do.”

  Alachakh shrugged. “Human jealousy,” he explained. “Earth is a world split into factions. You people thrive on the mistrust which breeds possessiveness and trading sense. A human is unwilling to treat anyone except his closest friend as an equal, and he harbours doubts even about his friend. Your ship is a human ship, my friend, not a Khormon ship.”

  Alachakh would never have said anything of that kind to any other man but me. I was surprised that he said it where Eve Lapthorn could overhear, if she wished. I don’t know whether he assumed that she was still engrossed in contemplation of the sky, or whether he was becoming tainted by long association with humankind. After all, he seemed suddenly to have acquired a great deal of trading sense of his own.

  “Which is your new ship?” I asked him.

  He glanced out of the window. “I can see her,” he said, “but she is too far away to see clearly. She is over there, but I doubt that you can be sure which ship I am pointing to. The port is unusually crowded these days.” He was right. I couldn’t pick out his ship.

  “Very crowded,” I echoed his words as we turned away from the window and sat down at a nearby table. He ordered another round of drinks, and Eve came to join us when they appeared.

  “Exactly what are the crowds for?” I asked. “Surely they aren’t all Caradoc ships.”

  “The Caradoc ships are in the deep Drift,” he replied. ‘they know where their prey lies, and they are hunting her with lunatic ruthlessness. She is in the core, of course—almost certainly within a transfigured domain, embedded in a lesion. Their maps of the Drift are good, but nothing can be perfect where nothing is stable. They move slowly by necessity.”

  “I heard that you might be in the Drift with them,” I said.

  “I would be,” he replied, “but for one thing.”

  “One thing?”

  “You, my friend. I wanted to see you.”

  “Sentiment?” I asked him, slightly sarcastically. He shook his head.

  “To make a deal,” he said. “A trade. You are taking your ship after the Lost Star.”

  “Not by choice,” I assured him.

  “Nor I,” he said quietly. “And that is why I must try to beat you to the target. You have a wonderful ship, so the story is told. She will go in and come back again. I have a good ship. She will go in, fast enough to beat the company, but she will not come out again. Do you see what I mean?”

  “You’re getting old,” I said. “So is Cuvio. This job is important to you.”

  He nodded. “If you will allow me to lead you into the Drift, then I will guide you to the Lost Star. If I cannot reach her, she is yours. If I do, then she is mine for one day. Then you can take her. I will not be coming back. The glory will be all yours.”

  “How do you know where she is?” I asked.

  He sighed. “The power of money. I have been unfortunate enough to become rich, and the rich have access to many secrets—they have aged me quickly, cluttering my mind with useless embarrassments. I bought this particular secret from a Caradoc captain. Some others have done the same. I have no doubt that your employers could buy it if they wished. But it might take time. They might not buy it in time. The Hymnia will fly faster than any ship has ever flown in the Drift. You won’t catch me. You might as well come with me.”

  “They won’t like it,” I told him.

  “But you can make them accept it.” He smiled. “And you will, my friend, won’t you? You don’t like the terms of your contract. That fatal pride, my friend, it makes you predictable.”

  I smiled back, without much humour. He was dead right I’d take every opportunity I got to set myself up against Charlot and delArco. Also, Alachakh was my friend. If he needed to reach the Lost Star so badly that he was going to kill himself doing it, then he must have a powerful reason. I didn’t have any reason at all for finding the wreck. Even if it was stuffed full of treasure, it wouldn’t be my treasure. I’d far rather Alachakh reached the Lost Star than I did.

  “We’ll do things your way,” I assured him. “But I don’t see why.”

  “I grow old,” he said again. “It is not so easy, as one grows old, to move about one’s mind. One falls prey to fixations. It is easy to become obsessed. One’s aims become separated from one’s judgement. The walls are sealed tight in one’s mind. The doors no longer open. I often envy you humans, who can live all of your life in one constant stream, with all your identity and personality simultaneously present. It would be well worth forgetting a few trivia in exchange for mental unity. But you are the great traders of the galaxy. You have the good end of the deal. Ironic, is it not, that humans are united within and divided without, whereas the Khor-monsa are exactly the other way about?”

  “You’re not so old that you’ve become deadlocked,” I said. “You don’t talk like a deadlocked man. You can still reach all the rooms of your mind. You haven’t begun to lose yourself.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” he told me. “I can move from room to room. Slowly, and with effort. But they are all so cramped, so full. Claustrophobic. There is no space in which to move, let alone expand myself. My potential is all used up. I am filled with too many secrets, too many memories, too many dreams. I never thought that I would regret that I dreamed so much, but I do. Dreams are very wasteful of the mind, my friend.

  “I am a Khormon, and when the Khor-monsa are full, then they have reached their end. I wish I could forget a little and create some space, but I cannot. I am stuck in the day before yesterday. There can be no question of a long tomorrow, and I doubt the latter hours of today. Soon even the minutes
will become painful to squeeze away into tight corners, One last gesture is all that I can spare. One last plan, one last goal, one last journey. I’d like to do the impossible just once more. Especially this kind of impossible.”

  “But why the Lost Star?” I wanted to know. “And why now? You could have had her to yourself at any time during the last forty years. Is it just because she’s the new centre of attention?”

  “No. The death of a Khormon is not a matter of fashion. I don’t like to die alone. I will be glad that you are behind me. But the rest is all irrelevant. It is just that for forty years there was no reason to go after the Lost Star. Now there is.”

  “You know what she carried?” I said, astonished.

  “Not precisely. I have my suspicions. But I can’t tell you about it. Not yet. Not until I know that I will fail, and that the cargo will be yours. I might be wrong. There might be no cargo at all.”

  “You think the cargo was Khormon,” I persisted.

  “No,” he replied. ‘the Lost Star never went to Khor. If there is a cargo, it’s from somewhere that doesn’t even exist.” He smiled. “From Myastrid.”

  He rose to leave, and I rose with him, gripping his hand again. It was light and curiously intangible.

  “I will see you again,” he promised.

  “I hope so.”

  “Cuvio will make arrangements for our flight. We will lift early in the morning.”

  He walked away, and I settled back into my chair. Eve was staring at me. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Wondering whether I just sold out your boss to the little green men? Traitor to the cause of Titus Charlot, or something?”

  She ignored the nastiness. “What’s Myastrid?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “Anglicised form of a Khormon word. Maybe the name for a world. Have to ask an English-speaking Khormon, I suppose.”