The Pilots of Borealis

by David Nabhan

  “This is the property of Borealis,” the hawks had declared so clearly in secret meetings, the sub rosa trysts to which Stephanangelo wasn’t invited. “Borealis discovered it, hailed it, caused it to put itself en route to Borealis.” Their logic seemed unassailable. Rittener decided he’d use the other side of the argument, as the doves most certainly must have brought up in those same clandestine meetings. Rittener steeled himself to finish, to broach this extremely unpleasant business, well aware that every step further was most definitely on illegal, seditious, life-changing ground. In a last moment of uncertainty and weakness he looked around himself at his newly adopted countrymen. Of a sudden he found the strength to let go the last restraint to which self-interest had clung, and it was in the faces of the Borelians around him that he saw what braced him. Their faces merged with so many others: with the confused, scared, disbelieving faces of too many humans he’d seen from the valleys of Asia on Earth to Valerian-3 in the Asteroid Belt. An innate yet evil power, humankind’s will to self destruction, had been sucking the soul out of him his entire adult life, and changing him into someone he was not intended to be. That ended today, forever, he thought to himself as he gathered his thoughts.

  “You couldn’t have imagined that something like this would have transpired unnoticed by others?” Rittener asked the Council.

  The Borelians in attendance had stopped fiddling with their amanuenses some time back during these amazing proceedings, realizing that the Council had quietly changed the status of the meeting from open to closed. All channels out were unceremoniously blocked, it was quite clear. It was too little, too late, and too ineffective though. Five hundred Borelians were still listening, and quite intently now as they realized what the councilors’ look of dismay and apprehension meant.

  Philip wasn’t backing water at all. “To which parties are you referring?”

  Rittener gave him an exasperated look. It was an excellent wager that any object, no matter the size, no matter from as far away as the Oort Cloud or the Andromeda Galaxy for that matter, which hurtled toward the Inner Solar System at the speed of light, and then braked at just as a shockingly unbelievable deceleration to invite contact, would certainly register on a data console—somewhere. As it was, the son et lumière of the Object had set off bells and whistles—everywhere.

  “The Terran fleet, on a heading to engage the Borelian squadron sent to rendezvous with the Object, I’d say is fairly good evidence that the Terran Ring qualifies as one of those parties. Would you not agree, Councilor?”

  Philip was engrossed in the virtual panel he’d asked Diana to open in front of him. His eyes never left it, his fingers deftly manipulating data in what from Rittener’s point of view looked like nothing but thin air. “We’ll ask the questions, Mr. Rittener,” Philip answered, as if he’d hardly heard what Clinton had said. He had heard though.

  Without looking up he fired what was meant to be a lethal shot. “I’m going to have charges prepared against you, for that last comment.” Now he raised up and glared straight at Rittener. “Your audacity in coming before the Council, declaring state secrets in public in this chamber . . .” Since sedition was a capital offense Rittener realized this was going to be a fight to the death. There were no rules in such combat so he interrupted the councilor.

  “Audacious? I’m an amateur. Only experts could think to withhold news of the greatest event in history and then turn it into just another excuse for another round of yet another war.” There was no fear for himself detected in his words, only disgust. “Both Borealis and Terra have behaved shamelessly, stupidly—dangerously,” he accused, and then went on to explain how.

  There was a peace faction on Terra that wanted to share and solve problems with Borealis, Rittener reminded the Council. There was a war party too, who wanted nothing less than the destruction of Borealis as an independent state. The cloak and dagger scenario had greatly helped bring the crisis to the point of all-out war, with two great fleets now streaking toward each other, set to collide near the orbit of Jupiter. Both sides had relied on the absurd strategy of mute silence, neither saying a word to the other, both pretending that nothing at all was happening, with the populations of both powers kept completely in the dark. Borealis, though, it was clear was desperate to claim her prize, and Terra just as determined to snatch it for herself.

  “You’re doing exactly what those who wish the worst for Borealis would hope you’d do,” Rittener warned, “and draining the political life out of your allies on the Terran Ring with the actions you’ve chosen.”

  “Allies? On the Terran Ring?” Philip sneered. “Is that who you speak for, these allies on Terra?”

  Admiral Albrecht and General Gellhinger re-entered the Council Chambers as Philip spoke. They were accompanied by an armed squadron of security guardsmen who, like always, were wearing the same expression of pure, deadly serious business. Rittener’s citizen’s oration was at an end.

  Albrecht spoke as he and the general took their seats. “Clinton Rittener, you are both excused and directed to appear at a closed meeting of the Borelian Council next session to be fully debriefed.” He was so obviously furious that he had a hard time getting the words out without showing his anger. He glanced around at his fellow councilors who were all shaking their heads in agreement.

  Rittener gave a respectful nod and repeated submissively, “Of course, Admiral.” He had lodged most of the points he’d wanted to make. All Borealis, all the Solar System, would be talking about the rumors of an unknown extraterrestrial Object and the impending clash between the Terran and Borelian fleets, and how both were stunningly true, how both led down two clearly marked paths, one for peace and the other for war. He’d missed though with one last important piece of news that more than anything else made sense of his “imminent danger” speech. Borealis might be challenging Terra to an all out gunfight—armed herself only with a pathetic little derringer. He would be able to apprise the Admiral and the Council about the most alarming part of his testimony behind closed doors, and hopefully, in time to make a difference. “It is a rare privilege to be heard by the Council,” he said politely, bowing to some extent. Then, after just the slightest pause, he added, almost as an afterthought. “I do have one more request to make of the Council—a purely personal one, if I may?”

  The Borelian Council, all of them, friend and foe, had had enough of Clinton Rittener. Not one of them even wanted to respond formally to any of his requests, personal or otherwise. Their collective silent stares he, strangely enough, interpreted as his leave to continue.

  “Dr. Stanislaus, it would be a great honor to fly with your niece, Nerissa. As I told you before, Councilor, I came to Borealis to pilot. I have admired her, greatly, for some time. If you would convey my request, I would be very much in your debt.”

  IT STARTED ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, though slowly—then, very quickly, it built. All the pilots and many others in the crowd were whistling, that particularly lunar, high-pitched whistle in the slightly alien air. It was another thing that pilots did that couldn’t be explained exactly. The idea, though, was that the sky might be falling, but Rittener, by Diana, had kept his priorities in order. This scarred, amply repaired, over-the-hill mercenary from Earth was sure acting like a pilot—and on no other place in existence was such behavior respected more than Borealis. And so the chamber reverberated with their whistles.

  From the gallery, even though the noise drowned out her words, he could read her lips. “I will fly with you, Clinton Rittener,” she was saying.

  And, for the first time, she gave him an entirely genuine smile.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE PILOTS’ CODE

  THE NEXT MORNING HE had already arrived at the base of the piloting elevator and was waiting for her. She was rarely without a memorable opening remark, and this was no exception.

  “Asking permission from my uncle was such a quaint and Earthly thing to do,” Nerissa said, her words accompanied by a wry smile. The mild sarc
asm was more than paid for though by her next sentence. “But I have never seen such a courageous case made in the Council, and I want to apologize for having misjudged you.”

  “Well, that comment about you doing anything for your country,” he was apologizing as well, “I know that didn’t come out right.”

  She opened her eyes wider and parted her lips in surprise. “But I would. I’m flying with you, aren’t I?”

  She held out her hand.

  “Apology accepted,” he said, taking it. Her fingers, like her limbs, were long and sleek, the nails brushed with glitter that sparkled in the dayglow.

  She’d only just awoken, Rittener could tell, her hair still uncombed, braided quickly for flying.

  Strolling next to him, her step in graceful harmony with the lunar gravity, she stood only half an inch shorter than him, and Rittener was a very tall man. Such an imposing frame was somehow yet delicately constructed. Nerissa’s allure though, her uniqueness, came from those kinds of dichotomies because she was a complex creature of diametrically opposed qualities, somehow contained within the same beautiful female animus. Her delicacy was yet another contradiction, for that was appearance alone; her stamina and will were absolutely unbounded. Nerissa used the contradictions and dualities that animated her personality to quite an effect, sufficient to take men’s feet out from under them. This princess, the niece of one of the Borelian councilors, the most famous flyer alive, and most probably a former or current spy to some degree, was also this sweet-smelling, hair-tousled coquette in front of him. Even that had its mirror image because she’d worn a particularly modest leotard, one so proper and reserved that it had to have been chosen quite purposefully. As she took his hand again she seemed shy and coy, and yet possessed of an eagerness barely hidden for dignity’s sake.

  “Something else I think I’ve had to change about you, too. You came here to fly, didn’t you? You’re a real pilot, aren’t you, Clinton Rittener?”

  This was even more personal and flattering, because pilots, well, they were a breed unto themselves.

  DIFFERENT COLORED RACING CHARIOTEERS, in ancient times, each led their rival factions in Rome, Alexandria, and elsewhere. They were powerful enough to almost bring down emperors. During the Nika Riots in Constantinople, Justinian had to flee from them to the city’s harbor on the Bosporus to take ship, and was only turned back at the last minute by his steel-hearted, cold-blooded wife, the Empress Theodora, who told him famously that “royal purple doesn’t run!” Gladiators’ sweat sold for such a price that only high-born patrician maidens could afford it, and centuries later the perspiration of rival knights and chevaliers who jousted soiled the kerchiefs of swooning countesses and marchionesses. Sport had always shaped society, and society done so with sport, since the beginning. Golfers had been businessmen, and cricketers, gentlemen. It was ruffians who played by the rules they created for ice hockey and rugby, and footloose partying surfers who invented a dialect to go with theirs. Pilots, too, had their own culture and etiquette, but it was much, much more than that. To many it was a unique bond among an insular band of brothers and sisters, and to some it was almost a religion.

  Pilots believed in absolutes, since they faced them constantly as they flew: exhilaration, endurance, confidence, and the rest. Each of these and every other quality existed somewhere, a perfect good and bad that suffused the universe, perhaps, many pilots believed, embedded in the very fabric of the nothingness of the vacuum of space. People had known this void since Old Modern times, but in the current era, with the realm of humanity measured much less as solid ground and so much more as the vast, empty expanse of the Solar System, the effect of that sea change was seen in a thousand places, piloting but one. The piloting code was pure simplicity, but roiling at the same time with an infinity of agreements and contradictions within, just like the incomprehensible quantum froth that lay beneath the surface of nothingness itself.

  Pilots just “lived correctly.” If that meant lying were the path that produced the real good, a pilot would be expected to lie. If truth did more good, nothing could induce a lie then. That same simplicity ruled every other action. Everything was allowed, up to murder and beyond, while anything might be forbidden at the same time. The basic philosophy was that every sane human knew instinctively what course to take to preserve dignity, to uphold the affirmative interior view of self, in short, to live one’s life as a positive rather than a negative force. Their audacious claim was that hints of this simple maxim—their code—was to be found in Egypt’s Book of the Dead, Isaac Newton’s little-read million-word treatise on biblical code, Vedic texts, Dead Sea Scrolls, and in a thousand other places where humanity had left a mark distinguishing itself from every other thing in this wide Solar System, or any other. They were the current vessel for this dogma.

  Pilots didn’t waste too many words describing it; the code was something that should come naturally to the flyer. Part of the shorthand was that as rare as it was for a person to venture into the public arena without an amanuensis, it really wasn’t that unusual for pilots to “go naked” like that. Neither Clinton nor Nerissa were wearing theirs. It was a statement that said that deception—among many other things—was really self-deception at heart.

  They boarded the piloting elevator and touched the tab to the expert level. Ascending presented yet another breathtaking panorama of wondrous Borealis.

  “Where would a poet promise to steal a Borelian woman away to?” Rittener asked the question in all seriousness, quietly, staring in awe at the vista before them. “Doesn’t that present a problem as a literary device—with paradise right here?”

  Nerissa, native-born but not yet jaded with the city’s beauty, was transfixed too. “It’s going to be better in a while,” she answered simply.

  There were no words to describe the bird’s-eye view of a pilot flitting around the gilded city of Borealis. Powered by one’s own muscles, truly flying like Icarus, or even much older myths and fantasies—as human winged figures painted in Neolithic cave dwellings showed—indeed, just calling such dreamlike ecstasy “better” didn’t really do, but then no words would.

  When they reached the launch platform and Rittener was helping her buckle on her wings he asked her the same favor everyone did. “If you’ve got any advice for me, before we start . . . ?”

  She looked at him blankly. “Well, I’d have to see you fly first, Clinton Rittener.” She waited for the wisecrack to sink in, hiding her smirks, tugging at the buckles and straps, checking her kit. And then she looked at him with an expression of realization. “Oh, you’re wondering about the last times, during our races,” and then added, “I can’t see behind me when I fly.” He wasn’t sure if Nerissa of Borealis was flirting with him, but she certainly was joking with him, even if it was at his expense, and soon—would be flying with him.

  “That’s true,” Rittener agreed. “Keep an eye on my dives, though, if you would? I’m already pretty much an expert at crashing into people.” The minute he said it, he almost wanted to pull the words back, not sure if he should have referenced her tangles with Demetrius Sehene with his tongue in his cheek. But Nerissa took it good-naturedly. And, she was determined to have the last riposte.

  “Diving? That comes at the home stretch.” She made a Galilean hand gesture of her own; she’d been there too. It suggested that was a long way down the path for Rittener.

  SITTING AND CATCHING THEIR breaths under Kepler’s Arch, recuperating after the flight, they talked of many things. Not a word though passed between them about anything he’d said in the Council Chambers, he too certain he’d already spoken far enough out of turn to last a lifetime on Borealis, she unwilling now to tempt him to do more damage. She too had good reasons for reticence; she was still Stanislaus’ niece. There were plenty of other things of which to speak. They talked about the marvels of the Solar System they’d both been fortunate enough to see for themselves, and laughed about the strangest habits and customs of those far-off places.
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  “Speaking of the most unusual customs, you are sitting under Kepler’s Arch, you know.” Nerissa asked him if he’d made his wish yet. The arch was the largest single piece of solid gold in existence. Anyone fortunate enough to sit underneath it could make a single wish, but only once in an entire lifetime. She interpreted by his disbelieving chuckle that he hadn’t.

  “Well, don’t wait too long,” she lectured him like one of the city’s guides. “There are cases of people who lived their entire lives on Borealis and had died without wishing. They hadn’t wanted to waste it, and waited for the perfect time that never came.”

  Wishes, and things that came true or didn’t, and the fatigue that overtook both of them now as they sat and collected themselves—this had both of them sharing a quiet moment. Sitting next to him, she boldly took his hand, enticing it toward her.

  “This was your father’s, you said?” she asked him. It was an unusual ring, on its face embossed a red salmon leaping over three blue waves. He pulled it off and handed it to her.

  “Have a look at it. It’s very, very old. From the beginning of the twentieth century—1914, to be exact.”

  Nerissa was enthralled. “I love antiquities!” The enthusiasm in her eyes was real. “This must have an amazing story. Does it?” If it hadn’t, Rittener would have had to make one up for her on the spot rather than disappoint her.