The Octagonal Raven

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Item: There were more than a handful of plausible reasons for the attempt: (1) dislike of my edart compositions; (2) an attempt to strike at the family or at UniComm; (3) an effort to make me an involuntary martyr; (4) an interest in harming either Klevyl’s engineering firm or OneCys by slowing down their key projects; (5) a personal vendetta of which I was unaware; or (6) semi-random violence against a moderately well-known pre-select.

  Item: There were probably other reasons I didn’t know about.

  I looked out toward the east, squinting because the sun was barely above the East Mountains, then looked away.

  In one sense Father had been right. There wasn’t a trace of anything … but what if I attacked it from the other side? Looking for what should have been there … and wasn’t. Could I build a picture of who was after me from what was missing — an old-fashioned negative, which, when completed, could be inverted to depict my attackers? Or reveal something about them?

  First, there were no obvious trails. Second, while sophisticated techniques and resources were required, there were no public spending patterns that could be traced, even by UniComm. Third, nothing was last-minute. Fourth, no one had tried to contact me — except Elysa. Fifth, Elysa didn’t exist. Sixth, whatever motive existed …

  I shook my head. The motive was power. I didn’t know what kind, and I didn’t know how an attack on me fit in, but someone wanted to use me as a way to power — or to destroy power. And that meant someone who already had power, and had it closely gathered, one way or another.

  Elysa was the only known key. Everything else had led to the shore — it was like looking out at the ocean, where every minute was different, and no landmark stayed the same. There were the remains of the laser — every part stock, and all melted down. There were nanitic remains — very few, unique, and related to no known or registered enterprise or research institute. Even the nanite spray dispenser in my glider — I’d had it examined by a nanitic fabricating engineer I’d worked with a year earlier on a Gyster project — and he’d informed me that it was standard medical issue.

  So I called up the VR of Elysa and me at Kharl’s, opaqueing the study windows, pulling on the headset, and setting the image for maximum contrast. Even in VR, she remained special, and I couldn’t see why. She had a clean profile, a strong but not overpowering nose, a determined chin, and very intent brown eyes. Trim, but not thin. Muscular, but not overly so.

  I tried looking at her more analytically. She’d worn little adornment — silver-worked jade combs in her hair, small matching silver ear clips with jade stones, and a jade choker. No rings on her fingers, and a wide silver bracelet set with spherical-looking jade stones. All her jewelry matched. Not hugely expensive, if real, but certainly not apparently synthetic, and the style was too tasteful to be popular — and that argued that the pieces were real, and custom-made.

  Could I set up a net routine to find who might make such a set?

  It might come up null, but everything else had — or come up so broad and inclusive as to be just as useless. I readjusted the headset, and dropped into the net once more, this time hopefully for a more targeted foray through the various systems. I walked down my VR corridor and opened the second door — the searching garden with the boxwood hedge maze. I’d liked that symbolism.

  Then I got to work. The first attempt was a disaster — as restrictively as I thought I had set the parameters, there were more than a thousand possibilities. I tried another approach, with cost and real stones as the principal determinants. That wasn’t much better.

  In the end, I set up four different routines, each winnowing through each other, and left them, slipping out of the boxwood maze and easing off the headset.

  I looked out into the noonday light. That was one of the problems with netting — it was all too easy to lose track of time. My stomach growled, not surprisingly, since I’d last eaten nearly six hours earlier, and most of my muscles felt stiff and tired.

  Standing, I stretched gently, then more vigorously, then walked to the kitchen. I needed a break — and something to eat.

  My eyes flicked outside, to the vacant expanse around the house, and I ran a systems and security check.

  Nothing, as usual.

  Nothing — except two attempts to injure or murder me.

  * * *

  Chapter 19

  Fledgling: Kuritim, 422 N.E.

  * * *

  Five of us stood in the coolness of the arched underground chamber, a chamber walled in a gray-tinged stone and a good hundred meters across and fifty high, an open space that would not have been possible a millennium earlier, before the development of sophisticated bioneering. The smooth white-gray walls blurred into indistinctness when I stared at them. Although we stood at near-attention, I could sense my eyes, and the eyes of the other four, looking up at the five capsule-like devices mounted on curved pedestals and gimbaled to move in any direction. I wondered why they were designed to move, when you could get the same visual effect through VR, but, like the others, said nothing as we waited for Major L’Martine to speak.

  The major was small for a pre-select, no more than a hundred-eighty centimeters in height, brown-haired, broad-shouldered, and almost blocky. He studied each of the five of us in turn, starting with Sylvie Garcya and ending with me.

  After another long silence, he finally addressed us. “I can see what you’re all thinking. Why is FS using capsules that move when you can replicate the effect with VR? First … you can’t replicate all the effects, as you are about to discover. And second, the visual inputs are only a part of the data you will have to process. What you will sense in the simulator is only a fraction of the intensity of both input and signals that you will experience if you reach actual deep-space training on a real ship. According to your physical evaluations, you all possess the basic neurological ability to sense the signals. Only working with the simulator will tell whether you have the mental and neurological agility to actually interpret and act upon those senses. For the purposes of the simulator, and to save resources and grief for those of you who will not make it, you will use complete headsets for the first stages of training. Those of you who make it to in-space training will be required to have implants when the time comes.”

  I had the very definite feeling that some of us would vanish after the simulator runs. I hoped I wasn’t one of those who disappeared. Somehow … I had to make it.

  “The simulators are actually the same as those used for training orbital lift pilots, and those of you who make it through training will hold certification as second pilots for orbital lifters. This first session is merely a familiarization. Some of you will make the mistake of regarding a mag-lifter as merely a bigger version of a ground glider, because they use the same power source. Don’t. The gyro system of a glider protects you. These will allow you to destroy yourselves.” His eyes raked over us again.

  “Even if you’re careful, the odds are that you will all crash. The question is merely how long you can maintain control and how you do it. You’ll each get at least three attempts. Now … why are we throwing you inside a control capsule right now? Because it saves time and credits.”

  Major L’Martine sounded like Father, and I wanted to nod, but didn’t. I also wondered how Wyendra had done. Probably better than I would.

  “We’ve discovered that, if you understand how disoriented you can get, and how much you have to juggle, all of you who are serious study harder and learn more quickly. That’s less wasteful for all of us.” He smiled. “I do hope that you’ve all studied the checklists and the procedures.” He gestured toward the arched step platforms that led to each of the simulators. “Take the one closest to you, and go and strap in.”

  Since I was on the left end, I walked toward the left-most capsule, and then up the curved synthetic steps that arched from the smooth stone floor up to the simulator capsule. I didn’t look down from the top of the gantry-like platform, but ducked and stepped quickly inside the small space.
>
  Once I had slid onto the replica couch, the hatch eased shut with a very definite and dull click. I took a moment to study the capsule — except that, since it wasn’t powered up, all I saw was the dull expanse of gray before the control couch, with only a single red-lit stud. I hooked the harness leads to the headset, eased the headset on, adjusting it so that it fit snugly, and then strapped myself onto the control couch.

  My fingers finally rested once more on the single lit stud in the capsule. I pressed it.

  The gray expanse filled with color and all sorts of virtual readouts, most of which didn’t resemble anything I’d seen in the training VR sessions, not at first. I tried to sort them out, and began to recognize the more obvious ones — like altitude readouts and speed. Above the manual data representations was a view of the liftway at Kuritim. That, I could recognize without struggling. I forced my eyes back to study each of the manual readouts, for the several moments before the system came online and buried me under streams of data. Rather they were more like comm lasers in different colors and frequencies, each conveying data in a different language or set of symbols.

  As the procedures manual had indicated, I went through the abbreviated checklist, then lifted my eyes once more to the VR view of the liftway at Kuritim, the one at which we always finished those grueling runs — each and every day.

  “Have you finished your checklist, Shuttle Alpha two?”

  I winced.

  “Shuttle Alpha two, ready to lift,” I said — and added the phrase mentally.

  “Cleared to begin lift-off roll, Shuttle Alpha two.”

  “Understand cleared. Beginning lift-out roll.” Using the headset as I might have my own vyrtor, I mentally torqued the Rochford delimiters, monitoring the magfield constriction to ensure a smooth acceleration through the initial ground effect along the liftway.

  Abruptly the information surged through me … so much that the liftway image blurred before my eyes … I didn’t so much hear the words or the signals as feel them … and my mental translation was running far behind the inputs and my reactions.

  … acceleration one point three … one point four … delta vee one nine zero … liftway remaining … eight thousand … seventy-seven … delimiters at point nine-nine … acceleration two point eight … attitude plus three red …

  I eased the orbiter’s nose forward — just slightly, I thought.

  … attitude minus two …

  I tried to edge the nose up just slightly.

  … attitude minus one … liftway remaining sixty-six … acceleration three point one …

  The lifter screamed-staggered — that was the way it felt — off the lift-way.

  …yaw at twenty degrees … increasing …

  The nose pitched up — why, I didn’t know, and I tried to correct. Then the left side of the lifter rose …

  …attitude plus four … DELTA VEE WARNING … DELTA VEE WARNING …

  At the near-electric-neural shock of the warning, I mentally wrestled the nose down.

  … magfield imbalance … IMBALANCE … IMBALANCE! …

  I cut back on the left delimiter. The nose centered.

  … yaw at ten degrees … centering … attitude minus two …

  Before me, the screen showed the water beyond the breakwater reef screaming toward me, and I pulled the nose up …

  … delta vee warning … DELTA VEE WARNING …

  This time I was too late in readjusting the nose, and the shuttle stall-spiralled into the blue waters of the VR Pacific.

  A strobe-like flash of darkness and light, and pain slammed through my skull before I found myself lying on the couch looking at the same blank-featured console wall as I had after first strapping in.

  “Shuttle Alpha two, please commence checklist in preparation for lift-off.”

  “Commencing checklist,” I answered.

  The second attempt was even worse. I tried to keep the nose centered, ran out of ground effect and skidded along the liftway, then pin-wheeled sideways into the water. The electric shock and the darkness were almost a relief.

  My third attempt at lift-off was not the disaster of the second, but somehow I missed the transition to the upper mag belts, and ended up plummeting into the ocean. So I was hanging upside down, strapped to the couch waiting for the simulator to recenter itself.

  “That’s enough, Candidate Alwyn. When the capsule rights itself, you can unstrap and come on down.” The Major’s voice was laconic, matter-of-fact.

  The headset went dead, and the capsule rolled upright. I was drenched in sweat when I fumbled my way out of the straps. Three of the other candidates were already standing on the smooth gray stone floor of the chamber when I reached the bottom of the steps. Sheryla Heyne was the last to join us, and she looked greener than I’d felt.

  We stood there, waiting, for a good five minutes before Major L’Martine rejoined us.

  He offered a perfunctory smile and then spoke. “Congratulations. You’ve all just discovered the basic differences between your gliders and orbital maglifters. Orbital craft have a number of advantages over various chemical-based lifters. First, they don’t require nearly as much onboard power, and therefore, their empty weight to pay-load ratio is higher. That means they’re cheaper to operate. Second, so long as no one pilots them the way you five just did, the wear and tear on the equipment is far less and they last longer. Third, they have far greater range and reliability. Around Earth, that is.” L’Martine smiled. “As you all have discovered, they also have some definite downsides. They require constant monitoring, and so far, at least, even nanite-based processors are inadequate for all circumstances. Now … we play a dirty trick on all candidates. On a regular orbiter, there are stabilizing systems … but they have to be monitored constantly by the pilot, because they can’t handle all field fluctuations. The reason why those systems are turned off here is so that you can learn to handle an orbiter without a stabilizer. All orbiter pilots do. Another part of that reason is that a number of the outsystem planets have nastier magfields than Earth, believe it or not. And the fields around Jupiter can be as bad as any atmospheric field. Add to that the fact that you don’t have the back-up stabilizing effect of planetary gravity in space. One attitude feels almost the same as another. You think this was difficult? Before you’re through you will be doing loops in the simulators, and it’s not for stunt training, but because you could get thrown into some strange attitudes, and we want you to be able to recover from anything.” Another perfunctory smile followed. “Actually, you five weren’t as bad as some I’ve seen. But don’t get any ideas … you have a lot of surprises coming.”

  Just how much worse could those surprises be than three crashes out of three attempts?

  * * *

  Chapter 20

  Raven: Helnya, 458 N.E.

  * * *

  On fourday morning, I was wearing a gray singlesuit, with a dark green vest, rather than a jacket, looking over the results of my net search queries. They were quite clear. There was only one place Elysa could have gotten the jewelry. Or put another way, the search routines had found one establishment, and only one, where such jewelry was designed and sold. Again … that didn’t mean she’d gotten it there, but it did mean that the people there might have some insights that I didn’t.

  The place was in Helnya — less than one hundred klicks up the coast. That fit. Why, I couldn’t say, but it did. Since it wasn’t exactly next door, and since I had the feeling that I needed to go there in person, I VRed.

  A young man appeared on the other side of my flat table desk, just a small circular holo image — inexpensive equipment. “RennZee’s,” he announced.

  “I just wanted to make sure someone was there before I came out.”

  “We only do custom work, ser,” he said politely.

  “My name is Daryn Alwyn. I have some questions about custom work.”

  Sometimes, the name is worth something. His eyes widened, slightly.

  “Those Al
wyns, yes,” I said. “Will someone be there in two hours?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Thank you.” I stood and walked down to the lower level hangar.

  I had already decided against taking the induction tube from Vallura to Helnya, although it would have been far quicker — and far less expensive, given the distance tax on using a glider for any travel more than five klicks. Probably I was deceiving myself, but I wanted at least the illusion of being alone, and I’d certainly get that if I took the inland ridge trail, rather than the scenic coastal path.

  Once in the hangar, I slid into the seat in the glider, not without a certain amount of trepidation, although I’d already checked the glider before I went to Mertyn’s, and then scanned it again after I’d returned. If someone wanted, they could still track me by tapping the public monitors of the skytors, or by calling me and letting the signal come through my belt repeater, but both taps and VR calls were monitored, and there would be a trail of sorts. Or they could have placed an inert burst locator somewhere on the glider, one that would only signal after the glider stopped and was silent for a while.

  I didn’t feel even half-relaxed until I was on the mid-ridge trail north. Only then did I slide the canopy half-back, and let the cool air, half-screened, flow around me under a clear blue fall sky. Some might have called the open canopy foolish, but it wasn’t. No one could have known where I was headed, or how, until earlier in the day, and it would have been impossible to have mounted a laser unit that quickly without detection. When I got to Helnya, I would have to be more circumspect.

  In the meantime, I enjoyed the trip. The air held the scents of oak and wine. The trail was fully instrumented, although an ancient would never have guessed how much was hidden beneath the grassy way, nor would they have guessed how many years and how much effort it had taken to create the grass itself.