by Janet Morris
In the visual monitor, sponge was glittery, suddenly; changing color, growing diaphanous, blowing away. A dark speck appeared, growing wider, then pale in its middle, as the black-without-relief ring expanded to show normal space speckled with bluish stars thick as cream. Julian knew he was seeing a great volume of space not as it was, but blueshifted and compressed, an entire universe compacted and ringed with impenetrable blackness.
They were heading right into its center, like an arrow toward a target. The target, as they grew near, began to jiggle and roll. Julian knew he could be seeing up to seven (man’s irritation had put a ceiling on creation) universes, only one of which was his native one. As the black ring widened, the star-field began to roll apart, differentiating itself, losing the blue tinge of “before,” taking on the redshifted lengthening of “behind.”
Then the event horizon was gone, past his view since Bucephalus was inside and then outside it, and all the cornucopia of stars had sped away but one miasmic ring laced with bright clouds of dust.
And so, two Kerrion children came to space-end, each filled with woes and thinned by burdens, bringing Softa’s sleeping self and Bucephalus, too, where they had given so much to be.
Shebat thought: Parma, you never bothered to take me aside to explain, not even to offer an apology for what fate you caused to befall me. . . . You have no claim on me.
Julian thought: Now, I will be free of it, taken at face value, treated as a man.
But Softa, sleeping with Bucephalus, did not think at all.
One thing they had not expected was a cold welcome: to be laconically assigned a space-anchor, nothing more than a set of coordinates to be maintained, and ordered to wait there for a medical team to arrive.
Shebat was incensed, Julian suspicious. Marada reminded them that facilities here were limited, referred them to their visual scanners for proof, snapping up identical views of the poor antiquated cylinders like gigantic fuel drums and the no-shape angly catching stations and the bristly solar collectors, laced together with outmoded cables from whose segmented length trains depended, crawling from dock to dock to dock.
The planet around which space-end was slung was sour and worn, a place of churning dust into which no spacecraft, not even a space-to-ground shuttle like the one in Marada’s belly, would choose to descend.
But it was the only planet around the tired old G-type star; it was the only planet with heavy metals in the whole of the explored ring which had once been a most ancient galaxy but was being sucked inward, ever inward, by the gobbling dark mass in its middle.
Because of the sink in the center of space-end, no one had ever cut across the featurelessness that sat, squat and incomprehensible, drawing all its star-prey ever closer. Because heavy metals were absent except upon the nameless planet dubbed “Scrap” by those who saw it in their sky, some said the planet was a captive, a hostage taken in the collision that had lost the galaxy the bulk of its stars. Whatever the nature of its history, whatever the details of its fate, the planet Scrap was not alone anymore.
The space-enders had come, sinking cables into its bedrock and mines into its face, making jokes about the “vagina of the universe” darkly beckoning above their heads.
All space-enders were obliged to spend a certain portion of their year laboring upon Scrap’s surface. Their “down-time” was the nadir of their lives, but essential to life’s continuance: space-end was alone.
She had no trade agreement with the Consortium; her products were embargoed, now that she had products to spare; she was the leprosarium of space time, her few children likewise tainted and unclean. Every so often, new folk were dumped there, but those vessels took no passengers back to civilized Consortium space.
Space-end was forever, they said, smiling wolfish smiles in hard, small-eyed faces.
The prison frigates that dropped new exiles never came closer than the most distant space-anchors, casting their cargo of unfortunates adrift in lifeboats with beacons but no thrusters.
There was a price exacted by the “rescuers” who picked up the new settlers.
In the case of the arrival of two cruisers under power, one of which had been anchored before and had disappeared, the rescuers deferred to the pirate’s guild, the only institution, space-enders claimed, they had modeled after the Consortium’s example.
Once, more than a century ago, the Consortium had attempted to police space-end. A disastrous massacre had ensued, the only fit punishment for which was exile. But how to exile the exiles? The Consortium had deliberated, and begun the policy that obtained at space-end to the present day: arbiters traveled tours of duty on the ring, gave judgments when so petitioned.
Otherwise, there were no rules to be broken or laws to be disobeyed: space-enders tolerated no higher authority than themselves, save the pirate’s guild, who were, everyone knew, pilots in disguise.
The guild promised mobility. If it could not yet produce it, it provided hope that someday it could. After all, the universe was unthinkable in its extent: a new colony could be planted in more fertile ground. But cruisers were essential: sponge-traversing ships were the fulcrum of plans to foresake Scrap for some fine solar system full of metals and wealth. In the meantime, piracy salved the space-enders’ ire, perpetrated utilizing seven cruisers stolen over the years, maintained by rote and two fallen engineers, eunuchs in their fifties, who scratched their heads over the advances incorporated in the Marada’s design when the space-end guild ship finally drew alongside.
They would scratch their heads the more when they learned that both magnificent cruisers had been tandem’d here by two (unsterilized!) children, one of whom claimed this trip as his apprenticeship and demanded pirate’s privilege; the other of whom staunchly affirmed that she was master both of the blond youth and the remarkable Marada; both of whom were Kerrions!
That Softa David Spry lay insensible in Bucephalus, once flagship of Kerrion space, was news met with open mouths and shaking heads, news that traveled like light into the farthest crannies of space-end, stopping work and play wherever it went: everyone knew Softa. He was the embodiment of their hopes. Women wept and students were let out early from school.
There might have been babies named after Softa, had not the only children at space-end been illegal Consortium children, shipped off with their parents into exile. There might have been clones named after him, if space-end’s limited facilities had been capable of producing perfect ones.
There were the “sirens,” it was true. Sirens were said to be fertile, potent by the same numinous miracle that provided them life. But as far as anyone knew, sirens had no names.
Shebat Kerrion was staring glumly out a zero-magnification porthole near Marada’s cargo bay when a siren glided up to the embrasure, pressing its pale, compassionate face against the glass.
It was scintillating; womanlike; ethereal, with its silver hair waving about its head and its lucent palms flattened against the porthole’s surface, blue veins showing through, humping with pulse. Its mouth moved: not red but blue-gray; within the mouth, tongue and gums were purplish.
Shebat Kerrion screamed.
The thing beyond the Marada’s portal wriggled, moued, pushed away like a spacefish, a last flash of foot waving adieu.
The pirate who came to see what caused the screaming chuckled when Shebat, hands cupping her temples, blurted out what she had seen.
“Hee, hee. They don’t talk about ‘em in the Consortium. No, they don’t.” The man’s face was nearly as white as his three-mil suit, as his sparse hair, as the flowing beard which made up for it. “That’s a ‘siren.’ Some say they’re people who went over the one-minute vacuum limit fully mil’d. ‘Stead of dying, they become . . . sirens. Phosphorylization in animal forms . . . mil acts like a proton pump, converts the epidermis once it’s filled the lungs. Possible, y’know, but not likely. Still, there’s lots of bodies unaccounted for in space. . . . Guys gone a minute and ten seconds have been brought back to air-breathing, say
it’s real rough. Consortium says nothing. Some folks die, that’s sure. Maybe, like they say, some don’t. Maybe they do live on like that; strip off their clothes and breathe vacuum and don’t have much to do with us regular air-breathers. Beats me. Anyhow, they’re harmless. They hang around to tow in lifeboats, sometimes. Don’t want nothin’ for it, just pop up now and again. . . . Feeling better?”
Shebat mumbled something, and turned away from the pirate’s leer: they all looked at her like that; at Julian, too.
She raised her eyes from her boots and saw Julian’s pale head ducking through the doorway.
“If you beheve that, Shebat, you’ll believe that I’ve started to sprout wings.” He turned his back to her and, reaching his hand around, patted himself on the shoulderblades. “See? Here’s proof.” Twisting his head around, he winked at her. The young Kerrion had been increasingly lighthearted. It would have been soothing if he had not been determined to present himself so because of their obvious detention.
“Quarantine,” the space-enders had explained.
“When are you going to let us out of here?” Julian demanded.
“Some folks coming up to talk to y’both. After that, I’d guess. Maybe tomorrow.”
Shebat had tried to silence Julian. She did not want to leave Marada, She could not have said why, but she trusted her instinct. She had been distressed when Julian had left Spry alone in Bucephalus, though a team of pirates and space-end physicians labored over him.
Shebat made a motion to Julian to follow, and headed for a cabin.
There, where she had often tried in vain to reach Julian, she tried again: “Will you stop insisting that we be allowed to debark! I have no intention of leaving my ship.”
“Of course, what else?” sneered Julian, then squeezed his eyes shut. “I am sorry. It is different for you, I understand. But you cannot stay in here forever.”
“Why not?” Shebat grated, not parting her teeth.
“Because . . . well, there’s only the two of us. You’re my master pilot.”
“You do not act like any apprentice I have ever seen. You do what you want. I am staying with Marada.”
“Marada!”, a pejorative. Then: “Shebat, is it what happened between us that night your marriage was announced? If it is, I assure you, I have forgotten it totally—”
“Then why are you bringing it up?” Shebat snapped, whirled on her heel, and stormed away toward the control room.
She was yet hovering there, a leg thrown up on the padded bumper of the master console, when Harmony, the dream dancer, waddled—lugubrious, piebald, and threatening—into view.
“Harmony!”
“You!” In translucent mil, her bespotted form gleamed, grotesque. “You have some questions to answer and some recompense to make! Sit down.” Behind her, two space-enders with long jaws and pursed frowns entered.
All three bore down on Shebat.
Leaning over her, so that the black/brown/red/white bull’s-eye between her breasts showed its every mole. Harmony rasped: “Let’s start with Softa. Then maybe we’ll get around to my dream dancers.” The face thrust close: “Now!”
Shebat, protesting, tried to rise. Harmony’s spatulate hand on her chest pushed the girl back down.
“Now!” Or you’ll be dead as that dream dance of yours! What have you done to Softa?”
Beyond Harmony’s expanse, Marada’s meters began to peak.
“Julian!” Shebat wailed.
A slap across the mouth silenced her. “Forget him; he can’t hear you. And don’t give me that horrified Kerrion look, neither. We won’t hurt ‘im. Not him. He’s worth keeping alive. You’d better convince me that you are, too, dearie, ‘cause I’d dearly love to space you and see if you’ll turn into a siren, or just turn blue!”
Shebat fingered her swelling lip gingerly, felt a wetness, and took her finger away. It was rouged with blood.
“I thought you liked me,” Shebat whispered slowly, her eyes on her own trembling hands, digging in her lap.
“Liked you? Liked a traitor who would walk out and leave us all to be sterilized and deported without even a word? Like you? Like I like your Kerrion boyfriend, your Kerrion—” The epithet “Kerrion” had broken free of restraint, trebling into a throaty scream, then was visibly swallowed up. The gelatinous breasts of the troupe mistress quivered, then were still. In a different, canny voice she continued:
“Now, you just tell us what you did to Softa, and help us undo it, and we’ll forget the rest of it.”
Though Shebat did not in the least believe Harmony, she wanted to tell her what would bring Softa back from faraway dreaming. The trouble was that she did not know.
When Valery Stang raced into space-end in Danae with two stolen cruisers close behind, no one had made any progress in uniting Softa David Spry’s body with his dreaming mind. The Bucephalus remained patched in to Marada; Softa David remained on board. They did not dare move him, being unable to foresee what the result of that might be. Shebat and Julian, too, remained in Marada, at space-anchor: Shebat maintained Marada’s control of Bucephalus; Spry’s plight maintained the space-enders’ control of Shebat.
“Pleasure to see you. Lady Kerrion,” said Valery, twinkling eyes softening his hatchet face. His lank hair was clubbed back. He still wore Kerrion black-and-reds. When he turned to wave out the two space-enders who followed Shebat everywhere she went on Marada, she saw Danae’s device and call letters were embroidered on his back.
Amazingly, the ubiquitous space-enders, obedient, disappeared.
Shebat felt annoyance, welcomed it, so long had it been since she had felt anything but the disorientation of entrapment.
“How is it that you, loyal pilot of my husband, can command space-enders?”
Valery Stang chuckled, “Come on, girl. Let’s not play the ingenuous Kerrion. It’s the middle of the third millennium, and we’re all thieves in the night. It’s just the night that’s bigger. You left your Kerrion prerogatives behind when you joined us—”
“I joined Softa,” Shebat replied frostily. “Not you or yours. And had I been considering it, the treatment I have been shown at the hands of these . . . pirates . . . would have convinced me I had been mistaken. I want—”
“No one cares what you want,” broke in Valery, more gently than fit his words. “These ‘pirates’ fan the last spark of freedom remaining in all the halls of man. You are here on their sufferance. Your survival depends upon their good will.”
“Good will?” It was Shebat, this time, whose incredulous laughter rang out around Marada’s control room. “Marada and I depend on each other for our survival. Don’t worry about us.”
“Look, Shebat. Harmony loves Spry like a mother loves her only pup. It was Spry who got her out of here and set her up in the Consortium. You can’t blame her.”
“Can’t I? False creature who has turned upon me: I curse her name as she has bespattered mine! I spit upon her spirit, and my spittle is acid—”
“By the last Jest, I had forgotten you.” Valery’s long-fingered hand stroked his nose, hiding his smile. “Let’s not get emotional. . . . I have to be going, posthaste. I came here to ask a favor.” He leaned against the master console.
“No favors.” Her lip curled.
“Gods, you’re beautiful. All right, no favors. A deal, maybe.”
“Go on.” She worried her hair, discomfited.
“I’ve the arbiter Marada’s son with me. I’d like to transfer him over here. He’d be better off with you. Marada’s got the facilities.”
“Better off with me? I cannot control even who comes and goes on my own ship.” The exaggeration rang hollow even to her own ears: she could be free of space-end and space-enders in a moment, merely by commanding Marada elsewhere.
“Shebat, please.” The eyes behind those words stayed her objections. “He’ll be safer with you. I have no experience with children, let alone sick infants. And the arbiter has sown only ill-will here. Besides, he’s Kerr
ion; you’re Kerrion. It’s your place.”
Safer, Sick infant? That child of a loveless bed? She almost said all of these but Marada’s cruiser-thought intervened, prodded, retired. She said: “Very well. What benefit do you offer in exchange?”
“I’ll intercede with Harmony. They’ll leave you alone. You and Julian will both receive passes, interim space-ender status.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I don’t want that. I want these people off my ship, and off Bucephalus, I want nothing to do with space-end.”
Valery shrugged. “Dramatic, but impractical. Very well, you want nothing to do with them, and they want nothing to do with you. It would be easy enough to arrange, but for the cruisers, and Spry. They do want the cruisers, and somehow or other they feel that Spry’s . . . affliction . . . is your fault. Is it?”
She spat at him. He wiped his cheek, which turned red as she watched. The veins at his temples bulged, pulsed blue.
“Shall I take that as affirmation? The senior dancer of Harmony’s troupe swears that when he was teaching you, odd and terrible things went on. Chaeron says you do strange things with your hands, and I don’t mean the obvious sort of things. Things that color the air . . . ?”
“So, you are here at Harmony’s behest, after all. Very well,” she said, feigning resignation. “Take me to Softa, and I will try to undo what has been done. Bring the child before me, also. But I will suffer no more violence from these criminals, nor their presence. Any evil visited upon me, I will turn back on the sender.” She leaned close, whispering through parted lips: “Keep them away from me, Valery, or they will know no more than Softa.”
“So you did do that?” There was a drawing back of Valery’s head, deeper into the protection of his body. Shebat could almost see the superstitious chill tickling the man’s flesh.
Her nails dug into her thigh, pain the only antidote to the smile threatening to break from cover. “No, I did not do it. But it is possible I could undo it, given the chance.”
“It will take time to convince the authorities here. Meanwhile, I’ll have the infant brought over.”