The Pilots of Borealis

by David Nabhan

  “A very amazing story, actually,” Rittener said confidently. “My father’s side of the family is from southern Denmark, an area that was once part of Germany. One of my ancestors exchanged buttons with an English Tommie during the World Wars, the first one. That fish, and the waves, that’s the insignia of the British Second Corp. It was passed down all these years, someone made a ring out of it, and here it winds up on the Moon under Kepler’s Arch.”

  Of course, the ring and story had more than piqued her interest. She held it up to the dayglow reflecting off the Dome to get a better look at it.

  “Why were they exchanging buttons?” she asked. “Was that when the war ended?”

  He answered her first with a contradictory, disconcerted puff of air. “It’s a sad story, Nerissa,” he warned her, wincing his green eye a little. “You sure you want to hear it?”

  The Christmas Truce on the Western Front in 1914 was more than a poignant story. It was the title page of an epic of carnage and slaughter that had been the history of bleeding Earth from then on, and still at it. German and English troops, dug into opposing trenches and having just undergone the most horrific six months ever experienced in warfare, of their own accord on both sides, against their officers’ wishes, exhausted by the killing, just put down their weapons on Christmas Eve, 1914.

  “So, they met in the no man’s land between the wires, exchanging gifts, trading cigarettes, singing holiday songs, playing soccer—and swapping insignia.” Rittener was going to go on, but left it right there. It was just as well since Nerissa didn’t care to hear any more.

  “Oh, I don’t want to know the rest,” she said, closing her eyes and crinkling her nose. “They, of course, had to go back to it the next day, right? They went back to killing each other the very next day, that’s how the story ends?”

  She took his hand and pushed the ring back onto his finger, shaking her head in distress. “You’ve got a relic of a nightmare here, Clinton Rittener.”

  He nodded his head in agreement but had a good answer. “It was my father’s. It’s really one of the very few things of his that I have.”

  Nerissa was still holding his hand when he said that. Now she took the other one too, sitting so close to him that he could smell her damp hair and the slightly sweet scent of her perspiration on her leotard.

  Her next words went straight inside him, to the deepest place. “That change in you that you spoke of in the Council,” she was looking straight into his eyes, “that made a great impression on me. This is part of that, isn’t it?”

  Rittener looked confused. “But I never said anything about any change that’s come over me.”

  Nerissa lifted an eyebrow. She could see inside men, her look said. She could see inside him, at least. That’s what her words said too.

  “No, you didn’t say that outright. But I heard everything you were saying, Clinton Rittener.”

  Maybe it was possible for women like her to peer within and see the wounds inside him. A change had built in him, growing for a long time now, and overpowering him finally at Valerian-3. It pleased him greatly to think that Nerissa could actually perceive it. She must have seen something, though, because a tear was almost welling in her eyes.

  “I want you to know that we might disagree on some important things—but I’m on your side. As a Borelian, as a pilot, as a friend.”

  Rittener reached over and wiped the tear from her cheek. “You’re not wasting a wish on me, are you?” he asked.

  She pushed his hand away and laughed. “Diana! You are arrogant, aren’t you? And that’s perspiration. Of course not, I made my wish a long, long time ago.”

  She squeezed his hand and said it again though.

  “But I’m on your side, Clinton Rittener. I swear it.”

  He heard her promise, under Kepler’s Arch, listening to her sweet words—while making a silent wish of his own.

  CHAPTER TEN

  POLISHED GEMS

  BRIGHT AND EARLY THE next morning—even though the brightness never changed and morning was just an archaic term attached to the ante meridian itinerary on Borealis—the sergeant-at-arms of the Council presented himself at Rittener’s quarters. He was accompanied by two smartly attired officers from Security Forces. It wasn’t made clear whether by invitation or compulsion.

  “The full Council is in session. I’m here to escort you.”

  From the Basement to Council Chambers was a completely interior trip, accomplished with very little effort through the honeycomb series of elevators, escalators, and moving walkways. Passersby either kept their distance or moved out of the way of this party—the officers in the lead with the same air as lictors of Old Earth bearing fasces to advertise the footsteps of an imperial magistrate. The Council, however, didn’t consider itself in the same category as Russian politburos or French directories, shuffling endless lines of victims off to gulags or guillotines with bored indifference. The sergeant offered Rittener a token of the Council’s humanity and courtesy.

  “It’s early and with no prior notice the councilors were concerned you’d miss your breakfast.” Borelian tarts, delicious concoctions of pecans, marzipan, and honey, were meant to be eaten on the run. They were addictive but Rittener couldn’t be tempted. “In training,” he declined. Noticing the sergeant’s eyes lingering on the delectable treats, he added, “But there’s no reason they should go to waste.” The sergeant-at-arms was wiping away sticky crumbs as they entered chambers.

  This second appearance before Borealis’ Council was more daunting in some ways than the first. Rittener stood before the eleven ministers and no one else, the closed session absolutely blocked, the chambers vacant. The only other entity privy to the proceedings was—Diana. She initiated the hearing, banging her virtual gavel.

  “Councilors, now to the matter of Clinton Rittener, docket number CR 2346-E.” She paused, and with surprising human affectation, fixed him with silent and uncomfortable scrutiny, hesitating just long enough to let Rittener know she had indeed remembered him, and with her next words to apprise him that the memory was less than pleasant.

  “This session is . . . classified.” She paused, yet again, before the last word, and put even more emphasis by raising her volume. The next few minutes Diana spent advising the witness regarding the minutiae of the legal strictures and responsibilities that applied. Rittener purposefully refused to look at the amanuensis and really was only half-listening. Daiyu, he could plainly see, by luck or design, occupied the Chair. Rittener probably knew her better than even her fellow councilors, even though he’d never exchanged a single word with her. Clinton had left his former soul in her country on Earth, dreamed often in her language, had read most of her Mandarin literary works and memorized the gems. The last time he’d been in Hell the people there looked and acted a lot like her. Daiyu, of course, knew all of this as well.

  Diana’s litany about all the ways Clinton could lose his life by losing his lips very quickly turned to background noise. He and Daiyu had locked eyes and seemed to be sharing something both sublime—and yet painful.

  Still, Diana demanded a response. “Is all that clear? Does the witness have any questions before the session begins?” Rittener’s lack of attention became apparent to Diana as it was now obvious he’d been thinking about something else all the while. The look in her virtual eyes suggested that amanuenses could in fact feel anger and other emotions. It gave the impression she’d be happy to have her holographic hands around his neck.

  “Mr. Rittener,” now a soft, feminine voice caressed the rock-hewn chamber walls. Such a small and mellifluous accent reverberating off the lunar stone piqued Clinton’s ears. “Is that how I should address you?” Daiyu asked. “You’re a Borelian citizen now. Your name is to be inscribed in the Roll. Is it to be Clinton? Or something else?”

  Clinton started and stopped an explanation that quickly went nowhere. There were too many very personal details to share. Daiyu smiled and shook her head. She’d been born on Earth
too. It was indeed hard to sever every tie to the ancient home.

  “That’s for another time,” she waved it off. “We have other matters before us.” Then glancing toward a glowering Diana, “Please indicate to us, Mr. Rittener, that you understand how important it is that you keep the confidence of the Borelian Council. Every word said during this session is classified.” She said the next in a way that said she had to. “To repeat it is to potentially invite the sternest punishment.”

  “I understand everything the state’s amanuensis has just elucidated,” Clinton replied.

  The poetess laureate noted his choice of three words instead of a simple “Diana” and smiled. “No, I don’t think you do understand.” She leaned forward from her position at Chair as if they were speaking across an accent table at one of her soirees at her mansion on Gamma Level instead of him standing in the docket, she raised across and above him on the dais. What she said though did seem like dinner conversation.

  “You’ve over the last days been the subject of two most remarkable contradictory developments. There’s a saying in my language.” And then she continued in Mandarin, “The gem cannot be polished without friction . . .” Rittener interrupted and finished it in her own language, “Nor the man perfected without trials.”

  “Yu shu da,” she complimented in Mandarin. Then she overruled herself. “Hen how,” she praised, meaning “excellent.” Clinton could sense immediately that it gave her great pleasure to speak in her native tongue. Her life for many years now had been surrendered to New English. This offered him an advantage. He could listen to her—in a language she longed to speak.

  Mandarin—for Clinton Rittener—meant something else though. It was the language of death, destruction, abomination, pain, and horror. There were so many phrases that he’d given voice to in Mandarin that he couldn’t imagine saying in any other tongue. Listening to her made him think back to some of his own directives in that language. “The current level of assaults on civilians has become insufferable and must cease. Rapists and outright murderers henceforth will be summarily executed.” He’d never said that or anything remotely like it in Danish or German, but had many times in Mandarin. “There’ll be no quarter given. Kill everything in the town that moves.” That also was not a common sentiment given out in Spanish or Arabic. Actually, even Clinton Rittener didn’t know how to say “no quarter” in Swahili. But he could be polite in Mandarin too.

  “Thank you. To hear that from you . . .” He didn’t finish but offered a slight bow, which she returned. His eyes told her that he knew more about her than she about him.

  Daiyu in her youth had been a great beauty. Even if her loveliness didn’t launch a thousand ships, twice that number of her family’s great shipping fleet were sunk in the wars on Earth from which she’d been swept away and avoided just in time. Harbin’s most desired debutante, at the interface between Russia and China on the Songhua River, had fallen in love far below her station and had to choose between the immense wealth and power of her father and uncles or eloping with a man with no prospects whatsoever, but in whom she recognized instantly the true reflection of her own soul.

  Her life had been compared to the princess Cusi Coyllur, abducted by the low-born commander of the army of her father, the great Inca Pachacutec. In Ollantaytambo in Peru, where her father and husband settled things with two great armies, the Earth itself is said to remember the tragic encounter, with the setting Sun’s image of the distraught Pachacutec frozen in the shadows that play against the outcropping above the ancient city. Daiyu’s affair was preserved in something as long-lasting as a mountain in the Andes. She and her husband’s impassioned adventuring took them to every corner of the Solar System, their treks giving birth to a book of sonnets, Wandervogel, said to contain some of the most poignant couplets ever written. “Wandervogel” were footloose German youth who said goodbye to prosaic society after the first world war of the 20th century and instead simply roamed around Europe. The second war crushed their movement; the Great Eastern War did that and more. It sent billions fleeing, with the smallest number drawn to it, and of those few, hardly any surviving to see its end. Daiyu’s husband was one of those volunteers, desperate to return to his China in the hour of crisis. Theirs was one of the great and tragic love stories of the age.

  She was in her middle age now and certainly past the time to drive men mad with plain desire. The maturing Daiyu, however, was something to behold nonetheless, exuding everything and anything one could imagine of the woman who possessed the hands that penned Wandervogel. Her face was at the far edge of youthful—bright, clear, a languorous and exotic admixture of White Russian, Chinese, and Japanese. The hair was so straight, so charcoal black, the perfect frame for skin as white and fair as a chrysanthemum. Her most attractive feature though wasn’t bestowed upon her through her genes. It was her grace. She seemed never to spoil the ideals of the precepts of tribangha, the Buddhist pose of three bends: hips, waist, and breast. Her every movement cut a swath through the rest of humanity, giving an exhibition of poise in motion. To many it was ironic that she should now go through life alone. Many more realized that it was unthinkable that Isolde should find another love after Tristan, or Juliet after Romeo. There was an often referenced meeting once between her and the lothario governor-general of the tiny Martian moon, Phobos, who was curious as to when her grieving should end and her next romance begin. Her answer was enduring. “Love is a blade both to conquer like a sword and yet to inflict the defeat of hara-kiri. Having known both edges I feel no regret.” There was simply no man on Borealis to step up to such a woman as Daiyu. And if such a man didn’t exist on Borealis, he’d be found nowhere else in the universe.

  THE CHAIR NOW GOT to business. “Keeping in mind how trials do serve in life, I regret to inform you that an accusation of sedition has been lodged against you. We are the body to adjudicate such cases. The Council is investigating and deliberating whether to formally indict or dismiss the charge.”

  Rittener’s lack of surprise said he’d expected as much. There was one thing that did require clarification. “I hadn’t realized you were required to inform potential defendants in advance. Are your laws so accommodating?”

  She answered in New English; a less friendly mien went with the tongue. “The entire city has spoken of nothing else since your last appearance here.” She stopped and corrected herself. “The entire Solar System is speaking of nothing else.” She put an elbow on the mahogany desk top and a thoughtful fist under chin. “That must have been what you wanted. Whether it’s sedition or not is for some other day.”

  Admiral Albrecht interrupted. “There are other charges too.” The admiral wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular. He simply grumbled the reminder out loud. Since it required no attention, it got none.

  Daiyu went on. “On the other side of this is the polish. You are the subject of a spontaneous public acclamation—yet another one—that has reached the Council. The citizens of Borealis want you to have a seat on the Borelian Council.” She paused and restrained a wry smile that almost escaped. “I am required by law to tell you that.”

  Rittener was taken aback. “But there is no election currently; there won’t be for another two months.”

  Now Admiral Albrecht spoke right up and loudly. “That’s absolutely correct. It’s also a cock-eyed piece of nonsense.” He looked at his fellow colleagues for support. “Who ever heard of such a thing? It’s ridiculous on its very face and nothing more than an emotional reaction that will pass just as quickly as it came.”

  Philip evidently agreed with the admiral. He was shaking his head from side to side while letting out barely audible chuckles. He seemed nonplussed to have to explain the obvious.

  “The Council has ignored acclamations in the past and this is an example of one that definitely should be placed in the same trash bin. What if it were the collective desire of the citizens of Borealis that we should present them with a unicorn, and that it should be polka-dotted?” He
turned to all-knowing Diana, the oracle, the very receptacle by which this strange portend came to the councilors’ ears. “It’s your opinion, isn’t it, Diana, that there are quite a number of ambiguities regarding this acclamation? Didn’t you yourself advise that there was a degree of uncertainty as to what the citizenry actually meant?”

  Now Breonia interrupted. “Cheese on bread! Rass! But this is no time for wizardry—or circuitry. I won’t have Diana bringing us the news and then interpreting it for us. Good God, Philip.”

  Philip threw his hands up. “Fine. Let’s confirm it then. Whose seat shall he take? Yours, Breonia? Or yours, Daiyu?”

  All the councilors had a turn, and at the same time. It left Daiyu with no choice other than to sound her gavel repeatedly. When the Chair’s requests for restraint were finally obeyed, the only one speaking was Rittener. He’d been trying to be heard and repeated himself.

  “But I have no wish to sit on the Council.”

  Daiyu feigned surprise and made it seem believable. “What’s that? No wish to sit on the Council? That’s an odd reaction to such a high honor.” Now she frowned. “It’s almost insulting you could decide something like that on the spot.”

  “I’m not the right choice. There are eleven good choices right here, right now,” he answered.

  “If so,” she asked the obvious, “what then will you do here on Borealis?”

  “I am a pilot.”

  “A pilot? Nothing more?” Her tone had been drifting toward curt; it was there now.

  “Nothing more,” he answered.

  “You’re fit, uninjured, prepared to fly?”

  “I could fly today if I had to.”

  “Not today—day after tomorrow.”

  Now she leaned back in her chair and gave him what he took as a look of satisfaction. “The Council is sending a diplomatic mission to Terra to see if some détente can’t be reached regarding the uproar caused by your citizen’s oration.” She waved her hand as if to say that the next was of no great consequence now that other things were taking precedence. “You’re aware that there were some irregularities in the recent games. We had lodged a prior request for another contest, a rematch, to confirm things, and the Terrans had already amicably agreed. You and a team of pilots therefore will accompany the legation; you’ll leave for the Ring in forty-two hours.”