He was a tiny man, just like the tree. "It is a rare one, no?" he beamed. "It is a limited edition, a stondai. I sold one only slightly less beautiful last week for three hundred cassaccas. But I can see that you appreciate it for more than its outward novelty. I would only ask from you"—he made a small supplicating gesture with his fingers—"two hundred fifty. For the chippette. Have you a projector?"
"We do," Ar said, indicating the parcel under his arm. Jael leaned close to Ar and asked how much two hundred fifty cassaccas was. He closed his eyes, calculating, and told her. She blanched. "Bargain him down," Ar suggested.
Jael sighed. What did she know about bargaining? She was innocent of such skills. Well . . . She took a breath and said to the shopkeeper, "Yes. Well . . . I like it very much, yes. But I do think, ah . . . that it's . . . ah, a trifle too much, really. Would you consider, maybe—" she coughed delicately—"less?"
The man studied her gravely. He seemed frozen in place. Suddenly he flashed a smile and nodded, with the barest movement of his head. "You are indeed a careful shopper," he murmured. "I suppose I could let you have it for—oh, dear—perhaps for two twenty-five. That would be—well, the best I can do, really." His face tightened as though he were reconsidering. "I . . . yes." He sighed. "I think I could let it go for two twenty-five. Yes."
Jael gazed at the tree, agonizing. Ar's hand, inconspicuous at his side, was making a pushing-down motion. She swallowed, and her voice seemed to freeze in her throat. "I, um—" She coughed again. "Two fifteen?" she squawked, her voice cracking like Ed's.
"Oh!" The shopkeeper's face looked pained. "Oh—my—" He didn't move for a very long time; he just stared at the tree. Then he sighed deeply. "Yes," he whispered. "Yes, we do need the business." He looked up and smiled faintly.
Jael felt a pang. Was she being unfair? But it was still a lot of money, for a data grain. She glanced at Ar; he shrugged. "Okay," she said. Ed, I sure hope you like it.
Jael was quiet as they left the store, the small case in her pocket. Ar finally broke the silence. "What's the matter? It's a very beautiful tree. It will look fine on the ship."
She nodded, striding through the mall. "I got taken, didn't I?" she said at last, stopping to face him. Suddenly she felt very young, foolish, and incompetent.
Ar's lips crinkled. "Do you like it? Was it worth it to you?"
She laughed and didn't answer, except to herself. Oh, I hope so.
On the way back to the ship, Ar stopped at a booth and purchased a new music synth; one that apparently made only discordant sounds. Jael stood by, trying to be encouraging, trying not to wince as he sounded a few bars for her. "I will play it only in private," Ar promised with a chuckle, putting it in his pocket.
Before they reached the spaceport, she found her interest in buying had fully awakened, and she returned to the ship carrying two beautifully dyed blouses. Undoubtedly, she'd paid more for them than she might have if she'd bargained more skillfully, but she no longer cared.
Later, Ar talked her into returning to the city for an evening balloon ride. They watched the sun set over the dusty plains surrounding Carnelius, and over the spaceport far out on the plain. They saw the spires and towers of the city glinting crimson and gold below them, and the street lights, many of them oil or gas lamps, coming on as twilight settled in. The balloon pilot provided a running commentary on the sights, but Jael paid little attention, her thoughts were turning to the sun and the sky. The city seemed a beautiful place to touch down in, and to spring away from, as though on a magic carpet.
By the next afternoon, they were indeed ready to spring away. Seneca was loaded and cleared for departure, their flight plan filed and approved. They said farewell to Mariella Flaire at the spaceport and took their final orders. Soon afterward, a tow was lifting them into orbit around the planet, and then out of orbit, into deep space, away from this world of exotic beauty.
* * *
In the shipdays following, they rigged down a long channel in the Flux, following a heavily trafficked pathway among the several worlds of the Vela cluster. It was one of the ironies of starfaring—that the known Flux pathways among these relatively close-together (in stellar terms) worlds, were comparatively long. Flux distances were always many orders of magnitude shorter than normal-space distances, but not always in direct proportion. And so they had a voyage some seventeen days long crossing the few light-years that spanned the Vela cluster.
They grew steadily more proficient in their teamwork in the net, and even began to introduce Ed to some of the rudiments of their work. Jael still marveled at the parrot's actions that had brought them to Vela Oasis, but she suspected that it had been largely luck that the parrot's instincts in breaking through the ice had been the right ones for the particular situation—though she couldn't discount the possibility that Ed had actually perceived something that they'd missed. While she didn't propose to make a full-fledged rigger out of the parrot, she hoped that he could learn to sense when he should stay out of their way, and when he could be free to join in with their actions.
During rest hours, they began assembling the holotronics to allow Ed freedom to rove the ship, or at least the commons and their quarters. They were four days into the flight when Ed first materialized in the commons, and they celebrated by toasting one another with carbonated fruit drink. Ed dipped his ghostly beak into Jael's glass and came up sputtering. Since his beak was only a holo-projection, the drink remained undisturbed; but Ed squawked happily and burbled at how wonderful and strange, terribly strange, this spaceship was. Jael's stondai tree sparkled in the corner of the commons, surrounded by a soft-focus holo-garden, and Ed promptly adopted the stondai as his favorite perch.
After that, the parrot was awake most of the time that they were, either in the net if one of them was there, or flying about the ship. They set up the last remaining projector in one of the empty cabins, and after some experimentation succeeded in projecting part of the rainforest there, so that Ed could have a place to retreat to if he felt homesick. It wasn't quite as real to Jael and Ar as the Environment Alpha system had been, but Ed seemed to enjoy it.
The time passed, and before they knew it, they had already made their call at Vela Delta Prime, where Ar looked up a Clendornan friend from his pre-rigging days and Jael spent a day sunning herself on the sandy shore of a warm, hissing ocean. Soon after, they were in space again, bound south and clockwise-inward on the galactic spiral for Seraph's Heaven, a collection of worlds where they were scheduled to make three stops. That was a journey of thirteen days, to be followed by a flight northward again, back toward the Aeregian worlds.
The flight to Seraph's Heaven went flawlessly, and it was a lively collection of worlds that they visited. But on the return northward they ran into trouble again—and this time it wasn't something that Ed could help them with.
PART THREE
Dragon
Chapter 23: Accident in the Flux
JAEL HAD just joined Ar in the net. It was a strange new image that he was rigging through: a vast network of what looked like the needles and branches of a fantastic evergreen tree, illumined by various colored, eerily reflected light sources. None of the landscape was quite in focus, so that the needles formed crisscrossing patterns that evoked a sense of form and shape without actually defining it. The ship was a silent, dark raft gliding among the needles. Ar was perched astride its nose, and Ed was on his shoulder, muttering softly. How do you like it? Ar asked, without turning to look at her. His voice was a murmur; he seemed not quite in a trance, but close.
It's very pretty. What is it?
Ah, I'd hoped you would recognize it. Ar looked back. He seemed disappointed. Don't you know the tradition of Kristostime, the festival they celebrate on, I don't know how many worlds—
Kristostime? Yes, of course I know it. Jael created a perch for herself beside him. But what made you think of that? And what does it have to do with this? She waved her hand at the scenery.
Ar hummed to h
imself. When I was young, I once visited a human family during that festival. They had a tree of needles that was decorated with lights and shiny colored ornaments. It was very beautiful. He glanced at Jael. One of the human children and I spent hours lying under that tree in a darkened room, peering up through the branches and needles at the colored lights, and imagining entire universes in what we saw. And those images have lingered in my memory ever since.
Jael stroked the neck of the parrot, marveling. She had no such memories from any festivals, but this landscape made her wish that she had.
It's an image from an ancient human tradition, you know, Ar continued. It was our stop at Seraph's Heaven that made me think of it. That name comes from the same tradition, I believe. Though I don't understand the tradition itself very well, I find it a source of many vivid images. Do you like this one?
Jael nodded. She relaxed and followed his instructions. She gazed without trying to focus her eyes on any one thing. The lights became blurry reflections of ruby and emerald and gold, lending quiet energy to the landscape, while the angled branches, with their dark needles, suggested form and boundary. She smelled balsam and spruce, and imagined exotic scents from other worlds. And as she let herself merge with the image, she knew that Ar had chosen well.
Floating dreamily, like thought itself, they wended their way through the intricate spaces evoked by the tree. The actual way was clear to her by intuition, if not by eye. It was as though they were being led by one light among all of those here, and though its identity seemed to flicker and change, they always recognized it: sometimes as a glow of ruby, or of deepest cerulean, or of amethyst purple. Always there was a gentle incandescence leading them in the direction they needed to go. She grew to feel content with that, as both Ar and Ed seemed content with it, as they wound silently around and through, like spirits moving in a world where no mortal being could live or breathe.
And so they traveled for a long and satisfying time . . .
Until a blinding light burst off to their left, as one of the colored globes exploded. For an instant, it seemed to be only a flash of light. But Jael had scarcely turned to look before the concussion hit. The first shock was mild, hardly more than a rumbling in the net. But something felt wrong, frighteningly wrong. An instant later, a second concussion hit, with a tremendous BOOOOM-M-M-M . . .
Ar—
A blast of ice-laden air slammed through the tree like a tidal wave, exploding needles and knocking aside branches like feathers; and in the wrenching blur, she felt the ship veering to one side, as a mighty force tilted and turned them. There was nothing to do but hold on.
Swinging branches swept into Jael's face, and lights flashed in her eyes, and she smelled something burning. At first she thought it was the net on fire, and she had to suppress her own panic, quenching an image of a sheet of flame flashing through the net. Then she realized that it was coming from the outside. She heard Ar shouting, and he sounded miles away, but she heard . . . check the net configuration . . . tell if we're . . . then his voice was momentarily lost in the hiss. But she knew that he was contending with the ship's movements so that she could deal with the net itself. She scanned backward and discovered that it was indeed unraveling. The power balances in the flux-field were flickering like candles in a stiff breeze. She would have to correct it fast . . .
Jael, can we move out of this—Ed, calm down!—can you tell if it's safe to leave the Flux?
Ar's call stopped her in mid-effort, because she was getting nowhere stabilizing the net. Perhaps he was right, they should surface and reestablish themselves in normal-space. Take us up SLOWLY! she answered. We don't know what we're going to find!
Ar was already doing just that, and she extended all of her senses to detect what they might be emerging into. They should be escaping from the worst of the storm as they surfaced . . . except that the storm was growing steadily more furious as they rose through the layers. Soon the entire Flux was glowing brightly with energy. The remaining tree branches were burning around them.
Jael, can you tell what we're getting into?
The sky was not darkening as they spiraled toward normal-space—it was brightening. There was a terrible glare in the sensors, and little detail; but the energy flux was incredible. Ar, take us back down! GET US THE HELL OUT OF HERE! They were surfacing in a tornado of cosmic activity—a nova, or a black hole, or who the hell knew what. They had to get out of there, and fast.
Jael, I need help! Ar shouted. We've got to ride it through!
Without answering, she worked furiously to strengthen the flux-field, to give Ar the power and leverage he needed. When she shifted her attention back to the outer net and the Flux, she found a winter avalanche carrying them thundering down a mountainside, great blasts of snow erupting on all sides. Ar had produced an image that he understood, but he could not change the forces that were there. Wherever and however they were being taken, they had no choice now but to ride it out, to try to keep from being buried or destroyed. It took the full power of the flux-field, and all of their strength to keep any control at all over their fall. And not only theirs: she also glimpsed Ed bent in flight, head down, all of his effort focused on flying straight and true in the midst of a terrible tempest.
She saw blurring snow, flashing white, and felt the ship rumbling and skidding and threatening to tumble end over end, and all she could do was brace herself behind Ar and join in his efforts. Time itself seemed stretched and distorted, affecting her perceptions. But as they clung and shouted encouragement to one another, the intensity of the avalanche gradually began to diminish. Eventually they were able to steady the ship in its downward plunge, and to keep it on the surface of the sliding snow, skiing it down the slope that was ever so slowly flattening out before them.
And finally, with her own heart pounding and all three of them gasping, they shuddered and bucked and came to a creeping halt. The sudden stillness was eerie, almost frightening in itself. Ed came to huddle, shivering, under her arm. Only the slow sifting of snow beneath the ship reminded her of the fury they had just been through. They looked at each other in silence, and they looked around them at a landscape full of mountains, a tremendous range of mountains—all still, and white with snow. It all looked a little dark, and that was because some of the power from the flux-pile was leaking away, instead of going into the net. Jael wondered, and knew Ar was wondering, what had gone wrong.
And she wondered as well: Where are we now?
* * *
It took a good deal of time on the bridge, studying the net-memory analysis, to piece together what had most likely happened. Apparently they had passed close to a Flux-abscess of some sort, a knot or distortion in the continuum that could easily have destroyed them. In this case, it seemed to have been a linkage to some sort of cosmic-scale disturbance in normal-space—perhaps a powerful jet erupting from some sort of highly energetic stellar object, or even a black hole system. They had not gathered enough information to be certain. But one thing she did know was that they were lucky to be alive. Whatever the object had been, there must have been an unusual degree of penetration into the Flux continuum. And to have struck with so little warning—was it simple misfortune? Or had they made a fundamental error in their navigation? It was a sobering reminder of the need for constant vigilance.
Unfortunately, the analysis of the ship's systems revealed something even more sobering. The flux-pile had been damaged, either by the storm itself, or by the stresses put on it in riding out the storm. They were going to be hard put to reach their destination, or any starport at all.
Jael and Ar faced each other across the instrument panels of the bridge, where the data showed all too clearly on the screens. "Well—" Ar said, and gestured silently.
"We can't repair it, can we?"
"I don't think so. But we're not crippled altogether; we do have the power to continue. The question is how much leverage we'll have in the net—how responsive she'll be."
"And how long
it will last." Jael tapped the display. "The power drain was pretty severe."
"So we have to choose a heading according to how difficult the rigging will be, and how quickly we can make the passage. Those two factors are not necessarily compatible."
Jael thought about that. They didn't know yet where they were, or how far off course they had been knocked. It was hard to guess what their choices would be. They would have to spend some time in the navigation library.
Ar rose unsteadily. "Jael, we both need to rest before we do much else. But I think it would be wise to go in shifts, and not leave the ship untended. You can sleep first, if you like, while I go through the library."
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