Star Rigger's Way

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  "Well," she said, disguising what might have been anger or just disappointment, "I'd like to meet your friend Cephean, anyway, before you go." Her face was dim and beautiful in the starlight.

  Is she trying to make me fall in love with her?

  "I don't know if I'll even see Cephean again myself," he said uncomfortably. He could see Cephean standing beside him right now, hissing and muttering, and he felt a strange sorrow that the cynthian was not really here. He was also filled with desire for Alyaca—or for somebody—and he was sure that she knew it. Janofer, what am I doing here?

  To his surprise, Janofer came, peering wonderingly at him. Gev, what's the matter? You want her, don't you? And she wants you.

  How have I gotten myself into this?

  Into what? She's attractive to you, and she wants you in her bed.

  But—

  What? She's not a rigger? So?

  She doesn't understand. She doesn't know why I have to come looking for you.

  Well, ease her down. Don't ruin it. Why not stay with her for a while?

  I have to get back into space, or I'll lose your trail—

  "Gev?" Alyaca was prodding him. When he focused on her, she slid her arms around him and kissed him. "What's wrong?" she whispered.

  He shook his head. The curves of her body pressed against him, bringing him back to the present.

  "Go back now?" she asked quietly. He nodded.

  They returned quickly, touching one another in the car as they flew back. Soon enough they were in his suite, in his bed, halfway under the drift blanket. Alyaca's eyes glinted wetly as she rocked sideways and forward and back over him, her hair brushing his face as she bent to kiss him, preparing to straddle him. Janofer lowered herself over him, and he cried with pleasure at the sight of her. But—it was Alyaca, not Janofer, sinking down upon him—and for a moment he was confused and dismayed, and in the next moment he was coming in quick, spastic spurts. It was over before he was even inside her.

  She smiled, breathing hard, and kissed him and stretched out full length against him, hiding her disappointment if that was what she felt. But he was flushed with shame—not so much for his premature climax as for his confusion. How could he have confused the two? How?

  Alyaca whispered urgently that it was all right. But it was not. Though they tried again a little later, he could not achieve another erection.

  * * *

  Two days later, she called him at the lodge to tell him that Kloss had returned and would see him in his office. He hurried over, hoping that he could get into Kloss's office without having to face Alyaca. He was ashamed to face her and certain that she considered their problems of the last two nights a sign of waning desire on his part. And he was not altogether sure that she was wrong.

  Alyaca was quiet when he arrived, but he felt her eyes following him as he went into the inner office to see Kloss. Kloss was a portly gentleman, who beamed at him when he entered the office. "Rigger Carlyle! Haven't seen you since I visited the old Lady—when was it? Have a seat! Make yourself at home! What can I do for you?" He spoke so quickly and effortlessly that it took Carlyle a second to catch up with his words.

  He sat, uncomfortably. "Well, it's about Lady Brillig, actually."

  "Fine ship. I was sorry to have to give her up." Kloss leaned back in his swivel-rest and rubbed his bushy temples with both hands.

  "That's what I was wondering about—well—you see, I've just returned on another ship and I was expecting to be coming back to Lady Brillig and my old crew who were running her. And then I found out that Lady Brillig had been sold, and the crew broken up, and the Guild didn't know anything else, not even who she was sold to. And I thought maybe you could tell me. Maybe you know where the ship is now, and why you sold her, and—"

  "Certainly! Now I see why you came all the way up here looking for me. Not often that anyone from your department does that, you know. Usually it's just my creditors." He chuckled. "The truth is, though, that I can't tell you very much. At least not about your friends, though I appreciate your loyalty to them. And to the ship.

  "But I can tell you where I sold the ship, anyway—that's no secret. She went to the Guenther Shipping Express Lines in a security sale sort of arrangement. That means it's possible I might get her back in the future, depending on a number of things. But they took her to Delta Aeregiae, and they were intending to use her on the outboard Aeregian cluster shuttle. So far as I know, that's what they did."

  "You might get her back?" Carlyle said breathlessly. He hadn't expected that kind of hopeful news.

  "Well, I can't promise anything, now," Kloss continued. "But we hope to get her back, yes."

  "Why did you sell her?"

  Kloss chuckled humorlessly. "Well—I hate to make this sound personal. I mean it wasn't any problem with the crew or anything—I didn't mean that kind of personal—but the RiggerGuild called a general strike because of something some slipshod outfit from Triax did, and it just came at the wrong time. We lost a couple of important contracts, and this and that happened, and by the time the strike was lifted, it was most advantageous for us to sell the ship. Hated to do it, though."

  Carlyle reddened.

  "Now I'm not saying the Guild wasn't right, though I do think they were a trifle hasty. The Spacing Interests Association would have moved on the matter, they just weren't aware of it soon enough. In any case, it's water through the spillway, and I know it certainly wasn't something you or your friends wanted. In fact, I'd be glad to have you running on any of our other ships."

  Carlyle nodded uncomfortably.

  Kloss leaned forward, clucking thoughtfully. "Tell you what, though. If we do reacquire the Lady, I'll give you and Skan and the others priority preference in running her for me. If you'd like."

  "That'd be wonderful," Carlyle said dizzily. "I don't know if I can get them back together, though." He was talking more to himself now than to Kloss. "I'm having a lot of trouble tracking them down."

  "I can see that'd be a real problem," Kloss agreed. "Wish I could help you, but I don't know there's anything I can do." He leaned back again, swiveling from side to side. "Listen, as long as you've come all the way out here, though, the least I can do is to show you some hospitality. I'll speak to my assistant and have her arrange for a place for you to stay at the lodge, and maybe she'd like to take some time off to show you around a bit."

  Carlyle tried to disguise an intense blush.

  Kloss eyed him. "Hmm?"

  Carlyle's voice trembled. "Well—actually she's already done that."

  "She's done which?"

  "Both." He cleared his throat. "We met earlier."

  Kloss grinned wickedly. "I might have known. Alyaca's usually a good hostess."

  Carlyle's thoughts swirled darkly for a moment, then he said, trying to edge away from the subject, "She's very nice. She was very helpful." Was that what she was being? "Helpful"? Was she "helpful" to every visitor here? He bit his lip to stop the train of thought.

  Leaning far over the top of his desk, Kloss extended a hand. "It's been good to see you. Be sure and let me know if there's ever anything I might be able to do for you—and if we get our ship back and you want to run her, let me know about that, too. Okay?"

  Carlyle nodded. "Okay. Thanks." He touched his fingers to Kloss's hand, turned, and hurried from the office. When he was back at the lodge, he called Alyaca.

  She sounded bewildered. "What are you doing over there? You ran right out of the office."

  "I wanted to think. Mr. Kloss was very helpful."

  "Did he put you onto the trail of your friends?"

  "No. But he tried."

  "What did he say?"

  "He told me about the ship, and he said that he might be getting her back, and if he does he'll let me and my old crew rig her again, if I can get them all together to do it."

  There was silence for a moment. He moved to where he could see her face in the phone screen. "That's better," she said resentfully. Then
she brought her expression carefully under control, in a businesslike manner. "So. Does this mean you'll be leaving in pursuit of your friend? Friends?"

  "Yes. Today. Or tomorrow." His head was spinning; he hardly knew what he was saying.

  Silence again. Then Alyaca said, "Don't spend an extra night here on my account." Her face was curiously stony, as though she did not know whether to maintain the expression or not. Then anger began to creep back into her eyes as she tilted her head. "It's not necessary."

  He began to reply but never got the words out. His diaphragm was lurching in spasms, and air convulsed against his stuck windpipe. "I—" he croaked, and he cleared his throat angrily. The anger came up in a rush; it was anger with himself, and with Alyaca, and with everything else. His face was very hot, and his eyes hurt, and he could not even begin to think straight.

  She looked at him darkly—but oddly. He was sure that she was about to demand something. But she said nothing. Her expression said all that she had to say.

  He tried to answer. He wanted to say that he would spend the night, and they could try to end their affair gently, with a last time together which they both would remember with pleasure. But he could not. His heart was already elsewhere. He couldn't face her again, and he couldn't be passionate even if he did, and without that he just didn't know how he could even speak to her without being humiliated.

  "I'd better . . . leave now," he said hoarsely into the phone. "Right now." And I've enjoyed it—it's been something I've enjoyed. But it just wasn't meant to be, and it hurts too much to think about it now, and I'm going to run. Run!

  "Right now?" she said in disbelief. She looked confused and offended, and at any moment she would become furious. How could he be this way, so abrupt, so callous? he knew she was thinking.

  He couldn't face her anger. He just couldn't. "I have to leave, so—so—good-bye." He clenched his eyes shut, trying just to hold himself together, never mind understand what he was doing.

  "Gev!" she cried furiously.

  He switched the phone off, trembling, crying suddenly with tears leaking out of his shut eyelids. I'm not callous like you think. Really I'm not.

  The tears came out faster, and faster.

  Chapter 9: Beginning the Search

  The landscape hurtled beneath his window, blurred. The flyer back to Jarvis was more than half empty, so he was able to feel alone and, in some sense, relatively secure. He tried hard not to think about Alyaca and what he had done to her—and what she had done to him, exposing him to such anguish—because every time he thought of her his eyes began to ache with terrible pressure. But right now his eyes were dry, grittily dry.

  So he had to carry on, after all, despite a feeling that he'd had something in his grasp which he had lost through blindness or ineptitude. But you didn't, he thought angrily. You knew all along that it wouldn't work, and you got yourself into it, anyway; that was stupid. But Alyaca had seemed as if she knew what she was doing. Hadn't she seen how it would turn out? Or had she also known and carried it through regardless?

  He lapsed into a time-stretching misery, which shimmered into dream visions: enormous collapsing structures, and dark plains under a smoky red sun caving into a subterranean abyss. There were people on the plain, and they too collapsed under their own weight; their faces sagged and crumbled, limbs stretched and ran flaccid, and sexual organs dropped away altogether, leaving dark wounds. The sky trembled and cracked. The sun loomed closer and darker overhead.

  Stop it! Stop it!

  If he indulged himself in visions like those, he might find himself producing them in the rigger-net—where they could mean a quick end both to himself and to his ship.

  The flyer arrived in Jarvis suddenly; he was astonished at how lost he had been in his internal world. He left the flyer and took another car to the spaceport, and soon he was back at the RiggerGuild Haven. How could the trip have been completed so fast? So little time to think!

  * * *

  He hesitated before the door to his quarters. Entering that room would be putting a wall between himself and the last week. Was he ready?

  He paled the door and walked in. Then he stopped. There was a certain amount of litter on the floor, and the doorway to the adjoining room was open. Cephean padded to the doorway and gazed at him, eyes flashing out of his black face.

  "Caharleel!" he hissed.

  "I'll be damned!" Carlyle said. He was at a loss for words. "I'll be damned!" He stared at Cephean. "Cephean! I'll be damned! I didn't expect to find you here!" He started to grin, to laugh.

  "Hyiss, Caharleel. Hi heff hre-turnss hyesterdays b-hefore hyesterdays. H-where were hyou? Hi thoss hyou were g-honss." The cynthian stared, blinking, and turned his head slightly to the side with what seemed almost to be a grin of his own. (Relief. Pleasure.)

  "I'll be damned, Cephean," Carlyle whispered. He was ready to cry again. He looked around the room, at the food wrappings scattered on the floor, and back up at Cephean.

  "H-where were hyou, Caharleel?"

  "Well," he said, "I was off speaking to the owner of Lady Brillig, trying to find out what happened while I was gone. He doesn't know where Janofer and Skan and Legroeder are now, but he might get our ship back, and if I can get my friends together we can fly her."

  "Yiss?" Cephean replied, watching him curiously. "Thiss iss whass hyou were do-hing?"

  "Well . . . most of the time," Carlyle said. He fought back a wave of pain. Time enough to explain all that later. "Anyway, how was your forest? The riffmar! Are they all right? Are Idi and Odi all right?"

  A train of riffmar scuttled out of the doorway past Cephean. One, two, three . . . Carlyle counted nine altogether. Nine—that was the right number. And two of them were a little larger and less fluttery—but when those little ones got bigger he wouldn't be able to tell them apart from Idi and Odi!

  "Hyiss," said Cephean. "Ff-sun h-and-s fforess h-were ff-very ghoods. Ssthey g-hrow hwell."

  "They look great," Carlyle said with real admiration. He hesitated, then asked hopefully, "Are you going to fly with me again?"

  Cephean's black tail looped over his head, behind his ears. His whiskers quivered. "H-where h-we gho, Caharleel?"

  Carlyle grinned and said, "How would you like to help me try to track down my friends? Maybe the five of us could fly Lady Brillig. I mean, since you don't really have any other plans, probably, right now. Do you?"

  "Hiss h-woulds vee hintheresthing. Hi noss wanss sthay hin foress. Men-ss noss hleave hriffmar ands me halone." His copper-and-black eyes flashed dangerously.

  Carlyle wondered what Cephean's response to the men had been. He decided not to ask. Cephean had been wearing (he hoped) his rigger-friend medallion, so he should have been protected if there was any trouble. "Okay, Cephean. I'll start making the arrangements today."

  * * *

  First he checked back with Walter Freyling to see if there was any word on the whereabouts of his friends. One message had come through—that Legroeder was known to have left the northern Aeregian territory, bound for a planet called Charos. That was in the general direction of Golen space—which could be ominous news—although there were plenty of respectable outworlds located in that direction also. As for Janofer and Skan, there was nothing definite. They had left Chaening's World separately, both bound eventually for circuits of northern Aeregian space. That could mean any of twenty or thirty systems, but at least Carlyle could start looking for all of them in the same radius of a half dozen lightyears.

  The second thing he did was notify the Spacing Authority, through the flight assignments desk, that he wanted to lift aboard Spillix as soon as a cargo could be cleared for any of the northern Aeregian worlds.

  The third thing was to apply for proper rigger certification for Cephean. The RiggerGuild registrar, it turned out, was reluctant to issue the decree, not so much because Cephean was an alien as because he had not graduated from a recognized academy or passed an evaluation. Carlyle went to Freyling, who said that
the registrar was correct in refusing Cephean full status, but perhaps something could be arranged. The next day Carlyle received a message telling him to return to the registrar. He went.

  The registrar blinked at him and said, "Oh yes, we've taken care of your friend, the cynthian. Did you bring him with you? We need him to take holos and prints, and so forth."

  Carlyle went back to get Cephean, who came along hissing and grumbling. He had insisted on bringing the entire group of riffmar with him, and they followed along in a train, Idi and Odi bringing up the rear. "Whass iss thiss?" Cephean sputtered at the registrar when the man motioned to the recording devices.