Star Rigger's Way

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  "I understand," she said softly.

  He started. "Do you?" he whispered. His thoughts went forward and back; it was hard to see her, with his eyes so blurry, but he thought her gaze was kindly. Perhaps she did, after all. Perhaps she did.

  * * *

  Three weeks passed with excruciating slowness. There was no word from his friends, and no word from Cephean either. Finally, lonely and worried, he flew out to the forest and went looking. He found the cynthian living in a tree bower with the riffmar. They spoke together and walked, and Carlyle spent the night in a nearby cabin. Cephean was having a good vacation, it seemed, and he wanted to stay for a couple of weeks more.

  "But you're coming back, aren't you?" Carlyle asked nervously.

  "Ho yiss," said Cephean.

  Reassured, Carlyle flew back to the Guild Haven.

  Still there was no word from the spaceport, and none from Kloss Shipping. He spoke with Alyaca but did not see her; they remained amicable at a distance, and that seemed best.

  * * *

  Four days later, she called with news that sent his mood plummeting. Kloss was definitely not reacquiring Lady Brillig. But he was buying a ship of the same model, a somewhat newer ship named Guinevere. She would be arriving at the Jarvis spaceport soon, where the registration would be transferred.

  "Irwin said he might consider changing her name to Lady Brillig II, as a gesture to you and your friends," she said over the phone.

  "No!" Carlyle shouted angrily. Trying to make another ship be Lady Brillig would be worse than letting the name die.

  Alyaca looked startled.

  "Sorry," he said, more soberly but still fuming. So what was the meaning of a name, anyway? He could fly this ship. Or he could probably, eventually, track down his old ship to her present owner and perhaps fly for him. But she would no longer be Lady Brillig; she'd be something else. So was it the ship that mattered, or the name, or the people?

  "Let me know when it's in," he said finally. "My friends still haven't arrived."

  * * *

  Walking through the spaceport the following week, he saw—he was almost certain—Lady Brillig sitting on a pad, being readied for flight. The ship's name was Caravelle III. He turned away bitterly, not willing to approach closely enough to actually determine whether she was Lady Brillig in fact, or just another ship that looked like her.

  Cephean returned a day later, to his intense relief; but when he greeted the cynthian, Cephean's response was muted. "Is anything wrong?" he asked worriedly.

  "Ssssssss," muttered the cynthian, his ears twitching. He looked up at Carlyle with unblinking eyes.

  The cynthian seemed all right physically. Carlyle looked at the riffmar. One, two, three . . . eight. "Cephean, where's the other riffmar?" he cried. "One of the young ones. What happened?"

  Cephean sputtered. "G-hone," he whispered. "H-man-ss t-thake, k-hill!" He hunched mournfully. (Grief. Anger. Need.)

  "Oh no, Cephean!" cried Carlyle. "How, Cephean, how?"

  The cynthian did not answer. He padded into his own quarters, with the riffmar troupe following in disarray; and, sadly, he began to work at a melon. Carlyle felt helpless to do anything except watch and stay with the cynthian until they could speak of other things.

  Cephean's grieving mood seemed to pass quickly. But he refused to say more about the lost riffmar, and Carlyle did not press him. He would say only that soon he could begin growing a new group of riff-buds.

  * * *

  Carlyle sat in the Guild restaurant, sipping a roasted coffee and moodily watching the movement of ships, some distance away on the field. A waiter appeared and said that a rigger was at central exchange, trying to locate him.

  "What rigger?" he asked, his heart stopping.

  "I believe the name was Lief. Janofer Lief," replied the waiter.

  Carlyle felt a series of lurches in his breast that lasted for a count of ten. He grunted, tried to clear his throat, and waved his acknowledgment to the waiter when he found that he could not speak at all. He ran to the central desk in the Guild lobby. The area was crowded. First he peered around to see if he could spot her; then he went to the front receptionist.

  "It's possible she went to the central exchange desk if she was trying to locate someone," said the receptionist. "Why don't you try there?"

  Of course. That was where the waiter had said she was. He went to the central exchange desk and asked the man there if he had spoken with Janofer.

  "I just got here," said the man. He pointed to a woman sitting in an alcove behind him. "Talk to her. She'll know."

  Carlyle went around to the alcove; he was keeping his emotions from exploding, but he felt the dam beginning to give way. He had to find Janofer while he could still talk.

  "You're looking for Janofer Lief?" the woman asked, before he could say a word. "She was looking for you, too. She heard that you were in the Guild restaurant, so she went there."

  Carlyle closed his eyes until the blood stopped rushing to his head. Then he ran back toward the restaurant, taking another route.

  He met Janofer coming out of the restaurant.

  She was dressed in a dark jumper, with a red belt, and with her hair long and silvery. Carlyle stood—unable to move, to speak, to breathe. He thought he might begin to cry, but he couldn't do that, either. The pain in his chest swelled until it engulfed his entire body.

  Janofer smiled crookedly, biting her lip. "Hi, Gev."

  Carlyle choked—then ran to her. She grabbed him and hugged him tightly. "Oh, Gev, it's so good! It's so good!" She kissed him on the neck and grinned and hugged him again.

  He grinned, too, but he couldn't speak for about a minute, until Janofer stepped back and gazed at him.

  "You came," he managed to say. "I knew you would."

  "Of course!" she cried. "How could I not, after you came all that way? And you have to tell me how you reached us!"

  "I wasn't even completely sure that I'd really reached you," he confessed. "It might have been some sort of crazy—"

  "It wasn't," she said. "Oh, it was crazy enough—what hasn't been, lately?—but I knew that was real. As soon as we go meet Skan, you can tell me all about it."

  "He's here?" Carlyle exclaimed.

  Janofer nodded happily. "We came in together from Theta Aregiae. He's waiting inside, in case you showed up there." She took his arm and marched him back toward the restaurant. "You look great, Gev."

  He blushed. "You look exactly the same," he said, though it was not quite the truth. Oh, she was beautiful and graceful, and she was a wonderful sight; but her face seemed fuller and softer, and there were a few lines he didn't remember, and her eyes weren't as quick and ethereal as in the memory-visions he had carried for so long. But should they be? he wondered. Haven't you learned?

  Skan rose from a table to greet them. He shook his head. "Gev, you crazy lunecock! You were real, after all. I wondered, I really wondered." He seized Carlyle by the upper arms and embraced him. "So now tell us. I had the feeling that you might have been in some kind of spot when you called us. How did you do that, anyway? And what about Legroeder?"

  They all sat, and for hours they drank and ate and caught up on the events which had separated them. When Carlyle asked what had happened originally to make them break up the crew, Janofer said, "I wrote all about that in a letter—" and she stopped and put a fist to her forehead, "which I forgot to leave for you, which I discovered a month later when I found it in my bag. Oh damn, Gev, I'm sorry."

  Carlyle said dizzily, "That's all right." He swallowed hard and went back to his original question. "What happened after Lady Brillig was sold?"

  Janofer looked at Skan, then back at Carlyle. "Well, Gev, it seemed like time to go different ways. Our last flight hadn't gone too well."

  "What went wrong?" he asked in bewilderment.

  "We had . . . problems . . . as a team. We missed you a lot. We had some trouble bringing Lady Brillig in."

  Carlyle looked from one to the othe
r. "But you always worked together beautifully." He started to say that they had worked beautifully with him, too, at times when he'd needed them. But they wouldn't have understood that.

  Skan said, "Time changes things, Gev. We were having problems. It happens."

  "You two?"

  "And Legroeder," said Janofer. "So when we lost the ship, we decided it was best to try going our own ways." She poked at her glass and stared wistfully across the table, and for a moment looked at neither of them.

  Carlyle hesitated to ask more; but there was so much more to hear. Things that had happened of which he was not a part. Since breaking the team, Janofer and Skan had been to many places, with different crews. They had met once during their travels, at Andros II. Skan had tried to dissuade Janofer from rigging into Golen space; but she had wanted the excitement, had been feeling a little desperate, and had wanted to see if the stories were true. "Bernith is not a place you want to go," she said. "Or Golen space, either."

  "Didn't you go to Denison's Outpost?" asked Carlyle.

  She shook her head in puzzlement. "Why did you think that?"

  Carlyle thought of a Thangol/cyborg he would have dearly loved to kill. He explained the story to Janofer. She nodded, unsurprised, when he mentioned Merck's name. "Pathological liar," she said.

  When the stories had all been told, they looked at each other sadly and quizzically. Carlyle felt strange. "I guess maybe it was silly, then, bringing you back here," he said uncomfortably. "I had thought—"

  "Not silly seeing each other, not by any shot," declared Skan.

  "And," said Janofer, "we'd like to give it another try. Times keep changing, and maybe it will work again, even without poor Legroeder. What is there to lose? We can try a flight in the dreampool theater here."

  "We have a ship available," Carlyle said slowly. "Not Lady Brillig, though. Some ship like her, called Guinevere."

  "Good, wonderful. But first I think we ought to try a session in the pool, just to be sure. Don't you, Skan?"

  "It would be the best thing."

  Carlyle realized suddenly how long it had been since he'd used a dreampool. Cephean and he never had used the one on Spillix.

  "Legroeder," whispered Janofer sadly. "Do you think there's any hope he'll come?"

  Carlyle shook his head reluctantly. "I just hope he's still alive. We can wait awhile, though—in case." He decided to change the subject. "Anyway, I want you to meet Cephean soon. Maybe he'll join us in the dreampool."

  Frowning to himself, he wondered how that would work out.

  * * *

  The next morning, though, he got a call from Alyaca Perone. Kloss had a cargo shipment to be carried in Guinevere. "He said that if you're ready to fly with a crew of at least three, he'll put in a priority request for you with the Guild. Otherwise, he'll have to let another crew take it. The shipment must go today." Her image smudged slightly on the videophone as she moved her head. They had a poor connection. She steadied and looked back at him. "Have your friends arrived?"

  Carlyle missed a breath and said, "Yes. Yes, they arrived yesterday. I'll have to see whether they're ready to go out again on such short notice. What's the destination?"

  "Hainur Eight."

  That wasn't too bad, distance-wise. It was less than a lightyear away, the star system nearest to Chaening's World. A short distance through real space, however, did not necessarily mean an easy hop through the Flux.

  "Round trip?"

  "Yes."

  "I'll have to check with Janofer and Skan," he said feverishly. "And Cephean." He was nervous as hell. Could they fly so soon? He wished that anyone had called him except Alyaca.

  "It has to go today. Irwin wants you to have first chance, but if you can't make it he can't guarantee that you'll be able to take Guinevere later."

  "I'll have to call you back," he said.

  Immediately he called Janofer and Skan and outlined the situation to them. "I know we were going to go into the dreampool first, but this may be our only chance to get a ship like Lady Brillig, and that's kind of what I was hoping for."

  Skan frowned, but he shrugged when Janofer allowed that she guessed it was all right with her. "But only because it's a short haul," Skan cautioned.

  Carlyle called Alyaca right back. "It's all set. We'll be ready to go this afternoon." A thought occurred to him, and he added, "And we need a modified rigger-station installed for Cephean. Make it stern-rigger station. You can model it after the one on Spillix. Field four, bay fifty-eight." He clucked thoughtfully, blinking at Alyaca.

  She nodded, but with what emotion he couldn't tell. "All right. If you can be aboard and secured by fourteen-oh-oh, we should have no problems."

  Carlyle signed off and strode into Cephean's quarters. "Morning," he said.

  "Ssssss?" Cephean was breakfasting on milk-melon with the help of the younger riffmar. Idi and Odi were sunning. The cynthian was in a sullen mood.

  "Want to fly with us today?" asked Carlyle. "Janofer and Skan and I are taking this ship Guinevere on a short trip, to check ourselves out with each other. And if you want to come along—you know—I'd like to have you. You're welcome to come. You can meet them on the ship. If you don't want to do any actual flying, you don't have to. You can just come for the ride if you want."

  Why did he suddenly feel so guilty? (He sensed loneliness. Desolation.)

  "Sssssss. H-no," said Cephean, turning away, turning back to his food.

  "Cephean," he said earnestly. "I want you along. This will be my first trip back with them, and you—you've sort of flown with them, in a way. They won't know you, but you'll sort of know them, so you'll have an advantage."

  Cephean was mute.

  "Please. I want you to keep flying with me."

  Cephean slurped at the partially crushed melon. His eyes flashed as he licked his jaws; he seemed to be weighing Carlyle's words. "H-all righ-ss," he hissed.

  * * *

  Carlyle, Cephean, and the riffmar met Janofer and Skan in the departure area. Janofer greeted the cynthian with delight; Skan was gracious but stoical. Cephean himself said little, except, twice, "Hyiss-yiss." The riffmar huddled shyly in their cart, and Cephean watched them protectively.

  The shuttle tube carried them out to Guinevere, and after they settled into their living quarters they gathered on the bridge. Carlyle was surprised at how closely the ship resembled Lady Brillig, but how many trivial differences there were, in decoration, in small bits of gear, to make her feel very different. He checked the special rigger-station for Cephean and asked the cynthian to sit for some adjustments. "Is Cephean planning to fly with us?" Skan asked. He sounded dubious.

  "Probably he'll stay at the fringes," said Carlyle. "But he wants to work with us."

  Janofer beamed. She was buoyant and friendly. But Carlyle thought that some of the original Janofer, some of the mystery, was missing.

  As they took their stations, he wondered if he was the only one who felt awkward.

  The tow's shadow fell across them as it descended to mate with Guinevere. They lifted smoothly, and soon they were in space, watching Chaening's World shrink against the void. The tow accelerated them for an hour, and then they were alone.

  Guinevere was speeding out of the Verjol system at a tangent to Chaening's World's orbit when the three riggers, with Cephean whistling softly in the background, extended their net into the misty realm of the Flux and pulled the ship along with them. Carlyle laughed out loud in the acoustical chamber of the net. The others seemed to breathe in time with his laugh, as they dropped into a deep, canyonlike valley.

  This is good. But I do wish that Legroeder could be here with us, he remarked.

  The valley walls rose on both sides of the speeding rig. It was a mysterious and forested valley, glimmering in full sunlight. He expected someone to reply to his lament about Legroeder, but no one did.

  After a time, Skan said, Let's all stretch a little and see how we're doing.

  Janofer responded at once
, extending her reach down from the keel position and forward with glittery silver arms that quivered as they flew. Carlyle reached upward and forward, creating symmetry; and then, out of sheer exuberance, he reached even farther than Janofer and pointed the way like a long silver bowsprit. Skan, in the com-station, expanded his presence to form a torus-shaped halo encircling both Janofer and Carlyle. This feels comfortable, said Janofer hopefully.