“Let me guess what came next,” Lin said. She settled down in the galley booth opposite Rhiann. “The Leap ability appeared and people started to fear anyone infected with khrystal. There was a movement to label them all as non-humans, and turn them into slaves."
“That's a fairly accurate summation of the history. After this many generations, khrystal is only detectable with special equipment, and if your doctor knows what to look for. The Leap ability only passes to daughters for some reason. We think khrystal has shifted to reside in or be triggered by female hormones. Leap ability doesn't even show up until a few years past puberty.” Dr. Haral glanced at Rhiann. She rolled her eyes in typical daughterly frustration.
Bain guessed that Rhiann wasn't waiting as patiently as she should for her Leap ability to appear. He felt sorry for her. No wonder she was so much more outgoing—she had a lot to prove and make up for.
“So most people don't know about the khrystal and the background of Leapers because you don't want to go through that mutation fear again. I can understand. When you study Bain's history disks, see how many mutation scares the Order has put down during the last few centuries. Including a fear that Spacers weren't Human, either."
“Ah, then you understand completely.” He smiled now, visibly relaxing. “We have kindred spirits with the Spacers. Fi'in has blessed us."
“Fi'in has blessed us all,” Lin murmured.
* * * *
“What kind of bonus do you think the Commonwealth Council will give us, for finding the Leapers and bringing them home?” Bain asked over breakfast the next morning. He yawned and rubbed at his eyes and considered skipping breakfast to go straight to bed. He had taken the last duty watch and he felt it now in his gritty eyes and aching back muscles.
“Bonus?” Lin paused in sipping her morning tea. “Why should they give us a bonus?"
“Well ... we didn't mess up. The Leapers are going to be good for the Commonwealth. It might even keep the Conclave from causing so much trouble, if they think the Leapers will go away."
“Uh huh.” She closed her eyes and sipped.
“Lin, don't you think we did a good job?"
“For one thing, the job isn't done yet. We still have to get the Estal'es'cai to Centralis without running into any trouble."
“How hard will that be?"
“I've learned one important lesson in life, Bain, if I've learned anything. Just when you think everything is going perfectly and nothing will go wrong—everything goes wrong. We get our feet kicked out from under us to teach us to watch what we're doing and where we're going."
“That's not fair,” he grumbled.
“Very little is, and we should be grateful."
“Huh?"
“Bain, it's too early in the morning to be discussing philosophy!” Lin moaned. The sound changed immediately to soft, ragged laughter. “Look at it this way: if we got the punishment we deserved for every wrong thing we did, we'd be in bad shape."
“Wouldn't the good things we do cancel them out?"
“If we're very careful, yes. But then we wouldn't have any fun in life, would we?"
“No.” He looked down at his bowl of hot cereal and silently agreed—it was definitely too early in the morning to discuss philosophy.
“As for bonuses ... I sure hope so. We might need all the debits we can build up against a drop in jobs."
“Herin said—"
“I know what Herin said. In the long run, it'll be true.” Lin rubbed at one temple. “I think I should make a new rule against serious discussions before breakfast is over.” She winked at him. “But, in the short run, Spacers are going to lose a lot of work because everyone will be fighting their neighbor and brother to get Leapers to carry their cargo and take them across the galaxy in a fraction of the time Spacers use. It's Human nature to want the newest and fastest."
“That's not—” Bain swallowed what he had been about to say. Lin had just told him life wasn't fair. “I think I should go right to bed. I sound like a whiny little kid."
“A little. Don't worry, though. Lorian and I talked about this. The Leapers have too many other universes where they do business. They couldn't afford to lose all those customers just to bring all Leap-ships to our universe and flood the transportation market. Besides,” she said, picking up her tea again, “there are less than four hundred Leap-ships, in all the universes."
“Wait a minute. If every captain had at least two daughters—"
“Not every daughter inherits the Leap ability."
“Oh.” Bain immediately thought of Rhiann. What would she do if she couldn't be a captain? He couldn't imagine her meekly staying on the Estal'es'cai to be crew for her sister. The two girls liked each other, Bain supposed they loved each other just because they were sisters. That didn't mean they would be able to work together. He thought of Rhiann taking orders from anyone, and couldn't imagine it.
“So you see,” Lin said with a slight clearing of her throat, “Spacers will never be obsolete or lacking work. You might even increase the demand if you recruit a good number of Spacers for those Scouts of yours."
“Yeah.” Bain scraped up one more spoonful of his now-lukewarm cereal and thoughtfully chewed and swallowed.
But what if I could recruit Leapers instead?
* * *
Chapter Nine
After two more days, they had a pattern of travel established. Sunsinger towed the Estal'es'cai through each Knaught Point they came to, then the two ships paused on the other side while the Leapers surveyed that area of space and recorded the spatial navigation points. Lin and Lorian compared navigation systems often enough that after the second day they had an automatic translation program between Ganfer and Watcher. After the crew of the Estal'es'cai had determined whether or not they recognized that sector of space, they enclosed Sunsinger in the tractor field and Leaped to the edge of the next Knaught Point.
They covered two month's worth of high-speed travel in nine days.
“I think I know where we are,” Lorian said after studying the spatial features the morning of the tenth day.
Bain and Lin had come over to the Estal'es'cai to give the crew more of Bain's lesson disks and for an early lunch. Rhiann, sitting next to Bain, wriggled a little at her mother's announcement. She clapped both hands over her mouth. Bain guessed she had been given strict orders not to say anything until her mother's announcement.
“This planet,” the captain continued. She unrolled a flimsy on the empty tabletop. Clear, dark blue, it had golden dots for the closest stars and green dots for the planets currently in orbit around the dominant star of the system. “The arrangement of the planets was our main clue. Their orbits have shifted less than we expected. We almost decided we were wrong. But what other suns in this general area of space have eight planets, each separated by an asteroid belt, and each orbit slightly off the galactic plane from the next?"
“That's a dead giveaway,” Lin said, nodding as she studied the computer simulation printed out on the flimsy. “Which planet?"
“This one. Our ancestors knew it as Norbra. Our records show it as a desert world that was mainly poisonous to un-augmented Human life."
“Un-augmented?” Bain asked. He glanced at Dr. Haral, immediately guessing what was meant. The man met his eyes and nodded slowly.
“The predecessors of the Leapers were born on Norbra. It was there, after hateful, fearful people tried to kill an entire generation of khrystal-born children, that we learned how to link with computers."
“You want to go down there, don't you?” Lin whispered.
“Do you think it isn't the world our ancestors knew?” Captain Lorian asked.
“The people who manage to live here now call it N'horba. I guess that's close enough to the original, with the language drift.” She shook her head and reached out to twitch the flimsy from Lorian's hands and started to roll it up into a tube. “If it was a desert back then, it was probably a paradise compared to now. This system's star
has gone through three recorded shifts in the last four hundred years. Radiation has gone up and down the scale, volcanoes have scoured the surface of the planet. Nearly three-quarters of the indigenous life has died out."
“Why do people live there, then?” Herin asked.
“Pride.” Lin handed the rolled tube to Lorian. “Remember what I told you about the Conclave, how they're mostly pirates with a loose code of honor and they walk carefully in each other's territory to avoid all-out war? We're technically in Conclave space. N'horba is a pirate's nest. Two nests, actually. Two opposing parties at either pole. That's the only safe place to stay for more than a day at a time."
“The fortress where the children lived was in the northern continent,” Dr. Haral offered.
“You're not seriously considering going down there, are you?” Lin's voice cracked. She sat back in her chair and clutched her arms tight around herself, creating creases in her saffron blouse. “Lorian, I consider you a very dear friend, and I don't say that lightly. For your own good, don't go near that place."
“It's not just my curiosity. It's part of my charge from the Fleet. This planet is the birthplace of our race.” Lorian shook her head. “Lin, consider this. You revere Kilvordi. What if you could visit his birthplace or his tomb and bring back something as simple as a container of soil for all the Spacers to cherish? Would you do it, even if it meant risking your life?"
“That's not fighting fair,” she growled.
Bain bit back an impulse to remind Lin that life wasn't fair. He glanced at Rhiann. The younger girl had lowered her hands from her mouth and clutched the edge of the table. Her face was pale but her eyes were wide and bright with excitement.
“We've conducted long-range scans since we first suspected this planet was Norbra. We detected little volcanic activity."
“So, it's quiet at this time of the year,” Lin retorted. “It's not the planet that'll kill you, but the pirates."
“Do you have any idea how fast our shuttles can fly?” Herin asked. Her eyes sparkled with a softer version of the fire in her mother's and sister's eyes. “Captain Lin, this is important to our entire race."
“If anything happens to your mother down there, what happens to your ship?"
Lin had them there, Bain admitted. Herin could pilot the Estal'es'cai if she had to, but her mother was the heart of the ship and crew. What if Herin could pilot, but couldn't control the Leap enough to take them to their home universe and the other Leapers waiting for their report?
“If you can't get home, the Commonwealth will be quarantined,” Bain said.
“That's a little mercenary, but just as viable an argument,” Lin said.
“We've already considered that,” Lorian said. She smiled, still with that spark of excitement in her eyes.
Bain recognized the slight hardness around her mouth—he had seen that determination on Lin's face, too, when she prepared to do something dangerous but totally necessary.
“Lin,” he said quietly, “they have to do it."
“Bain—"
“Like we had to test the shield plates and help get vaccine to the plague-bombed worlds, even if we ended up getting hurt or sick. Remember?"
For a long moment, Lin met his gaze. She was miserable, but he saw the pride in her eyes too, like the time he had been kidnapped and met Gorgi and escaped—and then broke his leg when the two boys blew up the plague bomb.
“When did you grow up?” she whispered. Lin rubbed a traitorous bit of moisture from her eyes and finally nodded. “How fast are those shuttles of yours?"
“Fast enough to surprise any pirates who try to come after us. Watcher will use the long-range scanners and warn us at the first sign of activity, the first flicker of energy that could remotely be a ship lifting or someone trying to scan us."
“It's a given you think you have to go.” She glared at Captain Lorian and the other woman answered it with a smug little smile and a nod. “But not the children."
“Lin!” Bain nearly slapped his hands over his mouth to stop himself from arguing. He understood her fears. That didn't mean he had to agree. Besides, Herin couldn't be classed a child, could she? And he wasn't a child anymore, was he? And if the girls went, then he could go. Maybe he should go, to watch out for them.
“If anything happens to you, your crew is stranded in our universe,” Lin continued. “Herin is training to take over from you, so she needs to stay on the ship, to get everyone home."
“It's perfectly safe,” Dr. Haral said. He reached forward to put a hand on Lin's, effectively stopping her argument. “We've been scanning, as we said. There is no activity, no signs of energy, anywhere near where our ancient records say the fortress should be. No people. We've discussed this and ... well, we need to do this as a family. If conditions are as bad down there as you fear, this might be the only chance for any Leapers to visit Norbra."
“You're either insane or fools or you know something I don't,” Lin muttered.
“We'll bring guards with us and wear radiation suits and enough equipment to detect the slightest dangerous element, long before it's strong enough to do anyone harm."
“It's necessary,” Herin said. “My mother needs to go, as the representative of the Fleet. My father needs to go, as scientist and to take samples. We'll all wear recorders, to get every bit of data we can in as short a time as possible. This is a historic moment. And the more of us who go, the better our chances of protecting each other, helping each other if something happens."
“The more you are, the bigger a target you make if those pirates decide to come investigate,” she growled. Lin sighed and shook her head. “You've been planning this for a while now, haven't you?"
“We've been up all night, talking,” Lorian said, nodding. She didn't smile, but that glimmer in her eyes threatened laughter, like a little girl ready to squeal in delight because she finally got her way.
“I hope there's room on that shuttle for Bain and me. If anything happens to any of you, I want to know that we did everything we could to help."
Bain grinned at Rhiann's yelp of glee. If he dared, he would have leaped to his feet like the younger girl and spun around the room for joy.
* * * *
There were no clouds on N'horba—or Norbra, as the crew of the Estal'es'cai insisted on calling the planet. No moisture, no weather beyond constant heat and blowing, scouring sand and high winds. Its colors were pristine and clear from hundreds of kilometers away in space; amber and scarlet and black. Bain pressed his face against the shuttle window, dimly aware of the cold of space seeping through the fifteen centimeter-thick clear metal, and stared at the dusty, dry globe.
They were ten in the shuttle on this trip. Captain Lorian and Dr. Haral, Lin and Bain, Herin and Rhiann, and four crew members. Everyone wore thick, durable, dark green jumpsuits with breather masks and helmets and gloves—and radiation badges to warn them if they approached toxic levels in the areas they planned to explore.
“Norbra was a queen in the ancient stories,” Dr. Haral said, breaking the silence when the shuttle was halfway between the Estal'es'cai and the planet.
“On what planet?” Bain asked. Herin glared at him for interrupting. Rhiann sighed and twisted her face into a teasing grimace—she had her back to her sister. Bain had the feeling Herin scolded her younger sister quite often for interrupting, and that Rhiann interrupted quite often.
“The stories I heard put her on Vidan,” Lin said. “That's only because we've considered Vidan the cradle of all life."
“At this point in time, it really doesn't matter,” the doctor said with a smile and shrug. “According to the oldest sources, she offended the Guardian Spirits of her tiny little country, by boasting that by her own power she had brought prosperity and peace to her people. She didn't quite claim that she brought the rain and snows and the fertility eclipses, but when the people praised her for that, she didn't stop them. The Guardian Spirits grew angry and through the seers and prophets, they demanded she
repent of her pride. She refused. Even worse, she boasted of her power over life and claimed her children were proof of that. According to the legends, she had ten sons and ten daughters."
“Ouch,” Lin whispered. She and Lorian shared grins and muffled chuckles behind their hands.
“Mother!” Herin squeaked. Her face turned red and she slouched down a little in her seat. Bain and Rhiann both had to struggle not to laugh.
“The Guardian Spirits told her that her pride would destroy what she valued the most,” Dr. Haral continued. “Norbra told them they had no power over her country because she protected it with her sacrifices and her priests would let nothing happen. The seers and prophets continued to warn her, making her angry. She grew so angry, Norbra ordered every seer punished whenever one spoke against her.
“One day, a child came into her palace and walked right into the throne room and came all the way up the steps and stood on Norbra's toes. Nobody stopped her. Everybody was too astonished to do anything. The child told Norbra to apologize and repent of her pride before everything she valued was taken from her. Norbra pushed the child down the steps."
“Uh oh,” Bain whispered. He hadn't read many of the truly ancient tales, but he recognized the pattern. Anyone who hurt or even threatened a child, especially a child speaking for the Guardian Spirits, usually ended up in deep trouble.
“Uh oh, exactly,” Dr. Haral said, nodding. “The child got to her feet and wiped the blood from her face and told Norbra her heart had turned to stone. The queen laughed at her. The child wiped her bloody hands on the edge of Norbra's robe and told her that blood would pay for blood. Then she turned and left the throne room and no one followed her. The next day, Norbra's youngest daughter died. The day after that, her youngest son. The day after that, the next youngest daughter. After six had died, Norbra's husband begged her to obey the Guardian Spirits. She had him exiled. Two more children died, and she threatened her priests with death if they didn't stop the curse. They couldn't. Finally, only her oldest son and oldest daughter were left alive. In tears, they begged their mother to save them from the death that had taken their brothers and sisters. Norbra walked away from them and went to her throne and screamed defiance to the Guardian Spirits. And in all that time, she never cried a tear."
Leap Ships [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 7] Page 8