by Peter Telep
"Mother!"
"Don't come, Blair." She dissolved into the stars.
He willed himself after her, moved in front, and she came to a jarring halt, out of breath and beaded with sweat. The lines spreading out from her eyes had deepened since the last time he had seen her, and the color of those eyes seemed to fluctuate with the beating of her heart, sometimes green, sometimes blue, sometimes a color he could only describe as sad.
"What's wrong?"
"I want so badly to talk to you, my son. But I can't."
"Why?"
"Because if I change your path, I change the paths of countless others, including my own. I can do nothing for you."
"Just tell me about—"
"The voice? The caress? The figure?"
He took her shoulders into his hands, and he felt her warmth surge up his arms. "Tell me! There's no pain in knowing. The pain is my ignorance."
"Doesn't it bother you that some of us have murdered billions over the years?"
"Of course it does. It makes me question even more who and what I am."
"Don't ask that question. And don't go looking for the answer. Oh, Christopher. I didn't want to leave you—I didn't. Know that, at least."
"What about the voice? The hand I felt on my cheek?"
"Beware them," she said, then repeated the words until they blurred into gibberish, became a tone that rose in pitch until he screamed for it to leave.
It did.
His chin rested on his chest. He panted as though he had just run a dozen kilometers.
"You got to lay off that beer, mate," came a familiar voice. "Hard to really tell what they put in that microbrew. Better you fix yourself right with a nice oil can of Foster's. Over six centuries of tradition. You'll learn."
Blair looked up, saw Hunter unbuckling from his jumpseat harness. Some of the other pilots were already on their feet, and a casually dressed man beamed at him from the hatchway. A harder look revealed him as Paladin, hair still wet from a recent shower, cheeks freshly shaven. For his part, the man made no remark of Blair's particularly rough post-jump appearance and came quickly forward. "Mr. Blair. It seems that the Olympus has already jumped. We can get a rough estimate of her destination from the Claw's sensors, but I think you and I can do a more accurate job. Care to take a ride?"
Within five minutes Paladin had the Diligent preflighted. The first time Blair had seen the merchantman, he had thought that she resembled a twenty-five-meter-long Ping-Pong paddle. His appraisal had not changed, but his affection for the vessel had deepened. Though no visual thrill, the old girl had, according to Paladin, never failed him. He sat at the portside helm controls while Blair handled navigation. They received clearance from Boss Raznick and rumbled out of the hangar, soaring up into the endless folds of interstellar space. A patrol of Rapiers had already been launched and had fanned out to scan the Area of Operation's perimeter. Blair caught sight of one of the fighters through the starboard viewport and double-checked his course, making sure he would avoid the fighters' vector.
"Initiate residuum scan," ordered Paladin.
Blair shifted to a small touchpad and tapped in the command. One of the nav station's screens mounted to a swivel arm abruptly illuminated with columns of data regarding the composition of the void ahead: mostly hydrogen, with traces of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon detected by their radio emissions. Then the screen flashed as it picked up a concentration of gravitons and anti-gravitons—the residuum from the supercruiser's jump. "Locked on to her jump point," he informed Paladin.
The commodore looked askance. "Thought you'd be full of questions. You all right?"
"Yeah," Blair answered softly. "And I am full of questions. But I'm not sure you can answer them."
"Try me."
"Do you… ah, it's ridiculous." Blair pursed his lips, returned his gaze to his instruments.
"You didn't look so well after our jump. Something happen?"
"Sort of. It's about my mother."
"A lovely lady."
"You knew her?"
Paladin thought a moment, a smile slowly curling his lips. "I introduced her to your father."
"Why haven't you told me?"
"When you were ready to know, you'd come asking. I've already told you a little about how the Pilgrims rose to power, then plunged to defeat. But there's so much you don't know."
"That's what my mother tells me."
A curious glint came into Paladin's eyes. "Your mother died on Peron during the attack."
"I know. But sometimes when we jump… I don't know. That moment between points, when you don't feel anything, when it seems like—"
"You see her. You talk to her."
"Yeah. I mean, is it really her? Am I talking to somebody else? To a ghost? To God? Am I nuts?"
"Have you done any research on this?"
Blair frowned. "I thought this was only happening to me. Is speaking to the dead common among Pilgrims?"
"You're not talking to the dead. According to one theory, you're tapping into a script that lies in a parallel dimension. It's been suggested that the human brain isn't a device for storing information but a tool for scripting it. This other dimension, they've dubbed it the Tanque Dimension, holds the scripts for every human being that ever lived, but Pilgrims can tap into that information. That's why when you get near a quasar or pulsar or what have you, you can sense a course through it. You're actually tapping into a script written by the first Pilgrims who navigated through."
"So it's nothing mystic. It just has to do with the ability to read that information," Blair concluded.
"Yes, but explain to me how you can interact so intimately with a piece of stored information. There's no advance Al at work. I think that's when it gets mystical."
Blair thought back to his first ride with Paladin. "When we jumped Scylla, you seemed surprised that I was able to navigate through her. And if you're a Pilgrim and you can tap into these scripts like me, then why didn't you jump the well itself?"
"I could have, but I couldn't have done it as easily as you. Why do you think I have all of those Pilgrim maps back in my quarters?"
"I don't know, but you're a Pilgrim."
"We're not all the same, Blair. Some say we evolved from savants. There were 'zappers' who were experts at electrical sys-tems; 'chipheads' able to engineer flawless hardware designs; 'toolkits' who could fix things with whatever happened to be lying around; 'crunchers' who could perform complex mathematical calculations without computers; and 'rabbitfoots' who supposedly brought good luck to missions. From there, other types of abilities emerged, and one in particular is the most interesting to us: the compass. These are the Pilgrims I told you about, those with a flawless sense of direction. They were subcatego-rized into the visionary, the explorer, and the navigator."
"Which one am I?"
"From what I've seen, you're a navigator. Me, on the other hand, I'm a visionary. I can determine which systems would prove most valuable for human expansion. Visionaries can throw their minds across the galaxy, seek out new systems, and analyze their composition. You don't even need to send a ship out if you have a visionary on your team. I have to admit that my skills are pretty limited, and I've been wrong on more than one occasion. I wish I were a navigator like you."
"What about the explorers?"
"They're able to navigate through uncharted regions. Most of the Pilgrim holocartography we have today was created by explorers. Some argue that of all three subcategories, explorers are the most powerful."
"What do you think?"
"I think there's one Pilgrim who's more powerful than any individual. He's a visionary, an explorer, and a navigator, and his name's Johan McDaniel, the last living descendant of Ivar Chu McDaniel. He's kind of a legend. I met him once. Nice old man— until you cross him. We're out here now because I want you to tap into his script. It's out here somewhere."
"His script? Why would it be—" Blair answered his own question before even asking it. "He's on
board the supercruiser."
"Amity knows him as well as I. She's using him as a supplement to her hopper drive. The calculations involved in creating and jumping a gravity well are sometimes too complex for the NAVCOM. McDaniel is handling that for her."
"What is she? A navigator like me?"
"No, she's an explorer." Paladin's hand went reflexively to his chest. The Pilgrim cross that hung hidden beneath his shirt had been given to him by Amity. Blair had once borrowed the cross and had read the inscription on its back. She wanted him to remember love across the cosmos, to remember her. Blair smiled bitterly as he realized that Paladin wasn't the only one who would remember her now.
Blair's nav computer chirped a warning. "We're right in the residuum now," he said, reading his screen.
"Okay, Mr. Blair. Get to work."
He gave his mentor an awkward look.
"Reach out and find that script. Learn where they're headed."
"Okay," Blair said sarcastically. "But I don't even know how to reach. When I jump a well, the feeling is there. I don't have to look for it."
"You learn something new every day. And here's today's lesson. On your feet, mister. Go the viewport. Just look out there. I mean really look out there." Paladin's voice came in a breathy lilt.
Blair stood, worked out the kinks in his legs, then went anxiously to the viewport. He tossed Paladin a worried look, earning himself an insistent, wide-eyed stare.
Stars, nothing but. Pinpoints against a void so familiar yet so alien that nothing Blair could do would ever change that. What am I supposed to see ?
"Me, probably," came a voice from behind.
Whirling, Blair came face-to-face with an old man dressed in a strange white robe and dark sandals. He looked past the man to Paladin, who sat motionless and unaware at the helm.
"So, Brotur Christopher. I take it you'd like to know where we're going." The old man's hazel eyes flashed like light through a prism, and his skin held a ruddy sun glow. He stood quite erect for a man so wizened, his chest bulging like a powerlifter's beneath his robe.
"Are you part of a script? Am I accessing your data?"
He chuckled. "That's a clumsy assessment, don't you think?"
"Then what are you?"
"I'm just me. And you're just you. And here we are."
"You with Captain Aristee? Are you helping her?"
The old man's brow knit as he took offense. "Of course. Where else would I be?"
"I don't know. Where are you now?"
"Why, I'm here, brotur, with you."
"Where is Amity?"
"Oh, were it that easy, young man."
"There's enough residuum here for me to estimate her destination. You can't hide that from me."
"Yes, I can. But her destination should already be quite obvious to you. If she's made a fatal mistake, this is it. Oh, I'm tired of sitting in judgment. We each have a path." He took in a long breath, sighed loudly. "Now, young Pilgrim, let me teach you about who you are, where you belong, and why life among the elect is yours."
Chapter 9
Vega Sector, Day Quadrant
Merchantman Diligent
Midpoint Lafayette and Tamayo Systems
2654.083
0600 Hours Confederation Standard Time
"Mr. Blair? Mr. Blair?"
The voice rang through him, and for a moment, Blair did not recognize his own name. He discovered himself staring at Paladin instead of the old man.
"Did you find him?" the commodore asked. "I think so," Blair replied, straining to remember exactly what had happened. "He never said who he was, but I think it was McDaniel. He said he wanted to teach me about being a Pilgrim. Then someone called. I'm not sure if it was you or maybe even Aristee. And here I am."
"Where are they headed?"
Blair sighed in disappointment. "He wasn't giving that up. I didn't know he could hide the coordinates."
"That's not something the average Pilgrim can do," Paladin said, then added under his breath, "sanctimonious bastard."
"He did say that their destination should be obvious and something about Aristee making a fatal error."
Paladin set his lips together, threw his head back, and studied the conduits crisscrossing the overhead as though they were lines on a star map. All at once he snapped out of the vacant look and activated the comm console. "Mr. Z? Tell the captain to recall all fighters and set course for star number"—he leaned toward one of Blair's nav screens—"ten-two-nine-one."
"Aye-aye, sir," said the Claw's comm officer.
Blair hustled back to his nav station and pulled up data on star 10-2-9-1. White dwarf. Part of the binary system called Blytheheart. He frowned. "Why is she going there, sir? No Confederation colonies. Some mines, refineries, mostly commercial operations. Is she recruiting?"
Paladin waited to answer until he had redirected the Diligent on a new vector, back toward the Tiger Claw . "Amity's not headed to Blytheheart at all, Lieutenant. We are."
Although Blair deepened his frown, the commodore focused his attention on the helm controls. Ah, yes. Paladin wanted him to figure it out for himself.
Using the nav computer, Blair quickly plotted a course from the Claw's present position to Blytheheart. He studied a three-dimensional map of the surrounding star systems and quickly realized that Blytheheart represented the jump point nearest them. Okay, so Amity wasn't headed there, but they were. Wait. She doesn't need jump points. We do. So we're going to Blytheheart to jump where ? He tapped in a barrage of commands that would bring up every destination ever achieved by Confederation craft via the Blytheheart jump point. Names of star systems scrolled down the display, and one immediately caught Blair's eye: McDaniel's World, the name of a system and a planet that represented a spiritual headquarters for the Pilgrims. "Sir? I think I know what you're up to. But if she just jumped to McDaniel, then she can probably take care of business and be gone before we arrive. According to my data, it'll take the Claw just under five standard days on full impulse to reach the Blytheheart jump point. She can waste that entire planet in five minutes."
"Mr. Blair, Captain Aristee has made a grave error—and we'll take every advantage of it."
"I don't understand."
"She's not going to McDaniel to destroy it. That planet rep-resents everything she stands for. Someday she'd like to see it as the hub and governing force in the universe, much like Earth is today. Yes, if I know her, she's going to McDaniel to see somebody, a man named Protur Carver Tsu the Second."
"Protur…" Blair repeated, reaching into his memory. "That's the title of the Pilgrim elect's most powerful leader. Kind of like't he Roman Catholic church's pope or the Vegan Victorists' kreek-son ."
"That's right. She's going to McDaniel to seek the protur's aid or blessing. If she can win him to her cause, she'll have the entire system behind her. The systems of Faith and Promise will quickly follow. It'll take the enclaves a bit longer, but they'll eventually fold under the pressure."
"All right, so she's there for a chat. Probably already sipping espressos with the guy. Where does that leave us?"
Magic found a home in Paladin's grin. "Yesterday, zero eight two, was the Pilgrim Holy Day of Acclivity. For seven days following the celebration, the protur has to remain in solitude. He goes to a retreat whose location is known only by him. There, he fasts and prays, and seeks communion with Ivar Chu and the others who ascended to the higher plane."
"Today's eight three, so she'll have to wait until eight nine to see the protur."
Paladin nodded. "And we'll be there on eight eight."
"Wait a minute," Blair said. "Why would she hang around there? Why not just come back when the protur returns?"
"She knows exactly what she's doing. Her request to see the protur has to be made as soon as possible. He's a busy guy. And no one leaves McDaniel after making such a request. It's a convention that plays right into our hand. And remember, that blessing is extremely important to her. She'll probably position the Ol
ympus behind one of the moons and shuttle down to the planet. We'll dispatch our Marines to pick up her, while the Claw and the destroyers disable her ride."
"It won't be that simple."
The commodore grinned knowingly. "Of course not. But there's always theory before practice. And the shit always hits the fan…"
Within five minutes after their return to the Tiger Claw , the strike carrier made way under full impulse for the Blytheheart system.
As Blair and Paladin plodded down the Diligent's loading ramp, Blair said, "Sir? I thought Mr. Gerald would have a problem with rushing off to Blytheheart."
Paladin winked. "Who said he didn't?"
"So that's why you went to your quarters while I landed?"
"Diplomacy is one of my strong suits, but Mr. Gerald taxes me. I didn't want to embarrass you or myself. But don't get me wrong. He'll make a fine captain. He just needs to better recognize his biases. He has softened a little."
They hit the flight deck, and the raised voices, humming thrusters, and aroma from fuel Bowsers tugged on Blair like a drunken friend.
"You know, sometimes I miss this," the commodore said, acknowledging the allure as well. "Then I get smart and wake up." He winked. "We got five days to kill. What are you going to do, Lieutenant?"
"I'll probably do some work in the sim. Catch up on some reading. Pretty boring stuff."
"Were I you," Paladin began, squeezing Blair's shoulder, "I would get that kiss she owes you. Call it intuition, but I suspect she's still in debt."
Blair looked away, digging his hands into his pockets like an embarrassed schoolboy.
"I'm out of line," Paladin said, releasing his grip. "I'm sorry. It's just that I've been in your position before."
"And what did you do?"
"I caught her. Hung on for a while. Then she got away. Don't let that happen to you, son."