by David Drake
The Merchant’s pump in its Cinnabar state wouldn’t have been able to load significant amounts of reaction mass from Brotherhood Harbor, and if Sorley had planned to buy a replacement, the situation must have gotten even worse. Rather than head straight for Dace with the kidnapped Rikard Cleveland, Sorley might look for a place where the ship could fill her reaction mass tanks at leisure and the crew could make what was doubtless yet-another attempt at repairing the pump.
Adele might be able to find suitable planets which hadn’t been catalogued, but Sorley wouldn’t have that option unless he or one of his navigating officers had operated in the Ribbon Cluster previously. Sorley hadn’t, according to the biography Adele had prepared in Xenos; it would be just bad luck if one of his officers had local experience.
Daniel brought up The Sailing Directions for the Ribbon Stars, then chortled in triumph. He’d found a planet within three days’ sail of Corcyra which was listed as suitable for watering in an emergency. The notation had a Green Star, however.
“Lieutenant Vesey,” Daniel said on the command push, “please plot a course for Point HH1509270. Same time frame as before. Break.”
Two more makeshift jitneys had arrived outside the Kiesche. Spacers tramped up the boarding ramp in puzzled enthusiasm. The liberty group from Hablinger had yet to arrive, but they wouldn’t be long.
Switching manually to the two-way link, Daniel continued, “Now, Adele: what can you learn about why HH1509270 is listed being biologically hazardous?”
CHAPTER 28
The Matrix, between Corcyra and HH1509270
Daniel loved the blazing splendor of the Matrix, and he found discussions with Adele to be informative and generally delightful. A discussion with Adele on the hull while the ship was in the Matrix was private—the only place you could expect privacy on a starship—but brought with it the nagging worry that Adele was somehow going to drift off into a universe which wasn’t meant for human beings or even for life.
Adele was tethered to a ringbolt on the hull and by a second safety line to Daniel’s rigging suit. There was no way Daniel could imagine which would cause her to become separated, but Adele had done quite a number of things which no one else could imagine. Most of them were good, but she really had proven remarkably clumsy on shipboard.
Radios couldn’t be used in the Matrix without throwing a starship incalculably off-course. Daniel touched one end of his communications rod to Adele’s helmet, then moved his own helmet firmly against the other end.
The rods were of hollow brass and filled with a dense liquid. Artificers on the Bantry estate had made them to Daniel’s direction when he realized he needed some better way of holding discussions on the hull than by pressing his helmet against that of the other party.
Daniel hadn’t directed Old Fogleman and his assistant to engrave the rods with the Leary arms or to chase them with fine arabesques, but he hadn’t been surprised to see the embellishments. The tenants and craftsmen of Bantry took pride in their jobs, knowing that the Squire took pride in them.
“What’s your guess as to why Sorley took Cleveland?” Daniel asked. The rod provided a medium in which sound vibration could travel between the hard surface of one helmet to the hard surface of another.
The discussion wasn’t really secret, but Daniel preferred to keep speculations away from the crew. Uncertainty made spacers nervous. Known dangers, including the risks of going into battle and simply the natures of their jobs, wasn’t nearly so worrisome.
“Sorley may plan to return to Corcyra when his ship is repaired and to use Cleveland to find the treasure according to the original plan,” Adele said. “I consider this less likely than that he will go to Cinnabar and demand a ransom from Mistress Sand and her husband.”
The Kiesche’s antennas rotated thirty degrees. That changed the angle at which the fabric of the electrically charged sails impinged on the Casimir Radiation which was the sole constant throughout every bubble universe in the Cosmos.
Reflexively, Daniel looked up to observe the rig. The topsails and topgallants were set, but another mechanically transmitted command reefed the latter by a batten each. The starboard topgallant caught, so a rigger climbed quickly to clear the balky sheave.
“I suppose he could hold Cleveland on some world which the Republic doesn’t control,” Daniel mused aloud. He hadn’t let either end of the rod slip out of contact when he turned to watch the course change. “Even Pleasaunce, I suppose. I don’t think the truce means that Guarantor Porra would be willing to do a favor for Mistress Sand.”
“Captain Sorley would be a marked man no matter where he went afterward,” Adele said. “He and all his crew. Mistress Sand has a long memory, and so do I. But I’ve seen no evidence that Sorley understands the concept of long-term consequences.”
There was a tick of sound that didn’t quite transfer through the communication rod. It was probably a sniff.
“Or not such long term,” Daniel said. “I’ll make a priority of looking for Sorley if things go wrong. But that’s if we don’t find Cleveland when we make planetfall tomorrow. As I hope and expect we will.”
The heavens blurred as the Kiesche slipped from one universe to another. The pattern reformed, almost identical to what it had been before except that the apparent colors had shifted lower in the spectrum.
Daniel knew he wasn’t seeing true colors—universes didn’t emit light into the Matrix—but his brain was displaying relative energy levels in a form that his mind was used to reading. Because the Kiesche had entered a universe of higher energy than the one she had left, the appearance of the cosmos changed in accordance.
“Adele,” he said, “when I’m out here, I really feel that everything in the cosmos is part of a single machine and I’m one of those pieces. It’s not power, it’s purpose. Everything has purpose.”
“I’m not religious myself,” Adele said.
For an instant Daniel thought that she had changed the subject; but of course she had not.
“I think it would be a fine thing to have purpose,” Adele said. “I’m not sure how I could tell, though. I can’t think of any objective data which I would regard as evidence.”
Daniel watched the heavens ablaze with all majesty, all existence. “Adele,” he said. “What do you see here in the Matrix? Anything?”
“I think there’s a pattern,” Adele said after a moment. “I don’t see it, though, which is very frustrating. I do better with data, I’m afraid.”
The communication rod twitched. Adele had shrugged in her air suit, but she brought her helmet back into contact as soon as she realized.
“I don’t believe some questions have answers,” she said, “so I prefer not to think about them. I’m more useful looking for information about this world where we hope to find Sorley.”
“I wish it had a name,” Daniel said, frowning. “Calling something HH1509270 is cumbersome at best.”
“I suppose we could call it Cleveland’s World,” said Adele. “Or Sorley’s Grave, if things don’t work out.”
Daniel laughed, though if Tovera had made the statement he wouldn’t have been sure it was a joke. He chose to believe that Tovera’s mistress had meant a joke, though.
“Daniel?” Adele said. “If we find the Madison Merchant in orbit instead of being on the ground, will you fight him? If we find her at all, that is.”
Daniel frowned, letting his soul drift in the cosmos while his conscious mind went over that question again. “We might get away with it,” he said. “Our popgun isn’t going to penetrate the hull of a three-thousand ton freighter like the Madison Merchant, so we won’t risk hitting Cleveland. Even to a tramp that’s in bad shape, we’re no danger. The problem of course is that the Merchant mounts a four-inch cannon herself.”
“I haven’t found much information on the ship’s personnel,” Adele said. “I copied the crew list when we were dealing with the situation in Xenos, but I can only cross-reference it against databases on Cinnabar. None of th
e names I found have a gunner’s rating in their background, but there are twenty of the crew on whom I have no information. At least under the names they’re using now.”
“It’s unlikely that the Merchant will have a competent gunner,” Daniel said, voicing the sequence of thoughts that had been caroming off the sides of his mind for some hours. “They almost certainly won’t have a gunner as good as Sun. Those are probabilities. The certainties are on Sorley’s side: a four-inch gun against our two-inch, and the Merchant’s much sturdier hull and frames.”
He looked at the Matrix and the glowing, splendid universes there. They aren’t looking down on me, I’m here with them, Daniel thought. But this decision is for me, not for the cosmos.
“I think it’d probably turn out all right,” he said aloud. “But I’m not going to gamble the lives of my crew on a chance when I think there’ll be better opportunities later. If we find the Merchant in orbit, I’ll wait and act according to what Sorley decides to do. If he inserts, we’ll follow him in the Matrix. I don’t think he’ll believe that’s possible, so we have a good chance of taking him unaware when he extracts again.”
“If you’ll give me a list of possible alternative destinations,” Adele said, “I’ll see what additional information I can find to add to what the Sailing Directions say.”
The sails were adjusting: the main courses fluttered down silently. They normally remained furled. They had greater surface area than sails higher up the antennas, but they provided less leverage for turning a ship in the Matrix.
“We’ll go inside now,” Daniel said as he reached the decision. “I’ll get you that list.”
Instead of walking toward the airlock at once, he paused to look again at the Matrix. He replaced the communications rod firmly against Adele’s helmet.
“You know?” Daniel said. “There are only two places where I really feel content: in the Matrix, and on Bantry. And I can’t stay either place for very long.”
“Life itself is temporary, Daniel,” Adele said.
She started for the airlock. Daniel followed, making sure that there was only the right amount of slack in the safety line.
Adele was right, of course.
It doesn’t feel temporary here, though, or when I’m relaxing after a celebration with the tenants.…
One Light-Minute from Cleveland’s World
The box of files had been in storage in the attic of the Manor in Brotherhood. On top of it were piled discarded items—trash—which had been discarded over centuries if not a millennium.
The lid of the box—it had originally been a case of ammunition—was stencilled Mining Records, but Adele had glanced inside. Many of the chips were of the standard type used for log recordings by Pantellarian and Kostroman ships some centuries in the past.
If Adele had had time, she would have copied the files to her data unit the way she had done similar files in the basement of Navy House. She had located the box the day that Daniel blew the breach in the Cephisis, so she had only had time to ask Cory to carry it aboard before the Kiesche shifted to the outskirts of Hablinger.
It nagged Adele that she had absconded with stored documents, though even she could scarcely describe the box as having been “filed.” No matter; she had worse things on her conscience.
Adele had sorted the chips immediately and found that most of them were indeed logs of ships from three to five hundred years back. She hadn’t had time to go through the chips properly until now, however. Pursuit of the Madison Merchant made them a first priority for Adele and the spacers with the correct expertise, a group which now included Able Spacer Hale.
Adele was so lost in her pursuit of knowledge that she didn’t hear the announcement that they were about to extract into sidereal space. The transition felt as though hot sand was being rubbed on the inside of her skin.
Her mouth opened in a silent gasp. She blinked, then regretted it because the imaginary sand was under her eyelids also. Discomfort was nothing new, and the effects of extraction went away promptly.
One corner of Adele’s display echoed the command screen; it showed a planet in the fuzzy detail of high magnification. An orbiting ship would not have appeared at the present scale, but Adele’s quick check of sensor data showed no sign of one. The Merchant had either landed on Cleveland’s World, or it wasn’t here at all.
Adele went back to the logs. The Kiesche had extracted a light minute out from the planet so that Daniel and his officers could observe activity on and around it unseen. They didn’t need Adele’s skills to accomplish that.
A few of the logs were from ships which had never made voyages to the Ribbon Stars. Adele couldn’t imagine why they had been place in a box in a Brotherhood attic.
Most had more local significance, but they didn’t involve HH1509270 or any other world which might be the right one under a different name or no name at all. Occasionally Adele had asked Cory to check recorded course data to see if an unidentified landfall could have been the one the Kiesche was looking for. None of them had been.
Until this one.
“Captain,” Adele said on the command channel. She sent the file to everyone in the command group in the form of an icon slowly pulsing between red and magenta. “I have something, I believe.”
“Roger,” said Daniel at last. “What is it, Mundy?”
The delay before Daniel responded had been brief but was still longer than Adele unconsciously expected. He and the others are searching for Sorley’s ship, she realized. Of course it would take them a moment to transfer their attention to a centuries-old logbook.
“It’s an entry from the log of the Khai-red-din, a Hydriote ship from the sixth century post Hiatus,” Adele said. She couldn’t put the date more precisely because the log used a notation specific to Hydra and her files didn’t include a cross-index to that system. When next she lifted from Cinnabar, she would have the necessary information.
“The Khai-red-din landed where I think was here,” Adele continued, “though they refer to it as Number 614 on Antigonas’ List. Their reaction mass tank had frozen and split, so they needed to repair the tank and replenish it with water.”
The Hydriotes were excellent spacers, whether they were acting as transport agents—as they mostly did now—or as pirates, which they had been over much of their history. Hydriotes were clannish and secretive in either role. Antigonas’ List was obviously a registry of potential landing sites, but this was the first time Adele had seen a reference to it.
Rather than interrupt Adele, Vesey set a text at the bottom of every display on the command channel: Madison Merchant located on surface at standard grid FF4430-8259. Anyone who wanted to switch from Adele’s presentation could highlight the icon Vesey posted with the text and go to imagery of the freighter on a small lake.
“The entry reads…,” Adele said. Part of her mind thought it was silly to tell people what they could read for themselves, but experience had taught her that she could not make things too simple for people asking her help in finding information. “‘Refitting required sixty-one hours. Before landing we welded caps over the High Drive outputs, and on the surface we ran the thrusters for ten minutes every two hours. Because the drives were under water we could not check the seal. When we had lifted to orbit, we found that three High Drives had been compromised because the plugs had been partially dislodged in the atmosphere, and there was enough build-up on the thruster nozzles to prevent the leaves from sphinctering properly.’”
Adele cleared her throat, then realized that she needed to say, “Over,” so that the others would know that she had finished.
“Sir?” said Cory. “If the algae is waterborne, then we don’t have a problem, do we? We’ve got plenty of water, and landing on dry ground is a piece of cake for us, over.”
“We’re at three-quarters on reaction mass,” said Vesey from one of the flat-plate displays. “We were topped off in Brotherhood Harbor, but we weren’t able to take on any at Hablinger because the water wa
s so turbid. Well, we could have but I didn’t think we needed to. Over.”
“I think our tanks are quite adequate to land and to get us back to Corcyra,” Daniel said, “and that’s all I propose to do. I’m just as glad not to have to run the evaporators to filter mud out of our internal water, and I’m even happier not to chance running the local algae through our system. So that’s not a problem, and thanks to Officer Mundy—”
He nodded, probably toward Adele’s image inset on his display rather than toward the person herself on the other side of a double curtain of holographic light.
“—we have a way to release Cleveland without risking an attack with the plasma cannon while the Merchant was on the ground. Which I’m afraid was the best plan I had come up with until I learned how virulent this algae is. I—”
“Six, I can take out their gun if we just make one pass at a hundred feet,” Sun said, stepping on Daniel’s transmission. “Even if there’s somebody standing in the open hatch, this pipsqueak gun won’t so much as give them a sunburn when I jam their four-incher’s traversing gear. Which I can do, over.”
Adele heard a note of desperation in his voice. The gunner had been expecting to show off his skill; now it sounded as though he would not get a chance after all.
“Sun, if I thought that were necessary,” Daniel said, “I’d order you to do it and have every confidence in your success. I prefer to negotiate in as non-threatening a fashion as I can, though, so we’ll simply land nearby and go down to talk to Captain Sorley in a polite fashion. And—”
Adele locked the sending units of the others on the net. Woetjans and all the males were volunteering. Daniel, of course, was saying that he was the proper person to negotiate.
“Captain Leary,” Adele said in the enforced silence, “the negotiator has to be non-threatening. I will be the negotiator. I will take Tovera—”
Because Tovera would follow Adele to the Madison Merchant unless Adele shot her first.