A Working of Stars

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  “One thing that’s going for us,” the Mage said, “is that as far as most people are concerned, sus-Dariv is already sus-Peledaen. So we can honestly say that we’ve come here to check some family assets. And then we’re going suborbital to another yard for repairs. We can demonstrate that we don’t have the fuel on board to get to orbit. That’s in the logs and it’s been checked and confirmed.”

  “What’s going to show in the logs is that I fueled up as soon as I came in,” Len said. “I always do, just in case.”

  “A wise precaution,” said Vai. “But this once, I’m afraid, you’re in error. The records will show that this morning you sold what you bought.”

  When they reached the sus-Dariv gate, Len pushed his ID card into the slot. “With two,” he said to the aiketh on watch, and the aiketh responded, “Lenyat Irao, sus-Dariv by current contract, with two.”

  Len’s ship, when they reached it, turned out to be somewhat larger than Zeri had expected—the three of them had to take a hydraulic lift up to the main external hatch. She felt exposed and vulnerable during the ride up, suspended on a platform between earth and air with no place to go; but nobody on the field below came running to stop them. She was grateful when the lift stopped and Len entered the combination on the keypad to open the ship. The hatch groaned open, and they stepped through.

  “Welcome to Fire-on-the-Hilltops,” Len said. “She may not be pretty, but she gets the job done.”

  “Where’s Herin?” Zeri said.

  “In the Antipodes,” said Vai. “Doing business for me there.” The Mage turned to Len. “Can you get local clearance to do a surface-to-surface hop?”

  “If they don’t give permission,” Zeri said, “take it anyway. I want to find my cousin.”

  Kief waited while Isayana and her aiketen and the attending physician made final preparations. The members of Kief’s Circle came in, masked and robed now, and stood together at one side of the workroom making preparations of their own—some stretching, moving in patterned exercises or in slow dancelike staff routines; others turned inward, already partway into trance. Kief had told them what would be needed, and they knew that ultimately one of them would fill the replicant. The working would show which one of them was best suited for the purpose.

  He could see from their manner and movement that all of them were willing, and even eager. This was a new thing they were doing, and theirs was not a common fleet-Circle. The purpose of this Circle was to do extraordinary things.

  A readout on the side of the gel-vat gave him the time. It was almost the hour; across town, the Institute Circle would already have begun their working. The lesser Circle’s aim was to summon up power, to bind the cords of it together into a strong cable, and feed that cable into the pattern of the greater Circle’s working.

  Kief turned to the physician. “Is the body ready? Physically.”

  syn-Velgeth said, “Yes. It breathes; the heart beats.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “Five hours, maybe six. If your people can’t animate—”

  “Fill.”

  “—can’t fill it by then, we’ll have to flush the bath with acid and let the gel revert.”

  “Five hours should be enough,” Kief told him. To Isayana, he said, “We’re ready. You’ve done your part; the rest is up to the Circle.”

  “What should we do?” she asked.

  “Keep out of the way—and don’t interfere, no matter what you see happening. Even if this turns out to need a great working.”

  He could tell from her expression that the idea of not doing anything wasn’t pleasing to her, but she and the physician moved to the side without argument, standing together in obscurity outside the bright illumination thrown by the single worklight. Kief gestured to his Mages, and they came forward to kneel around the perimeter of the chalked circle with the gel-vat in its center. He waited until all the others were settled, then took the First’s position, knelt, and slipped on his hardmask.

  The eiran were everywhere.

  He saw the pattern of Garrod’s working, as he always saw it wherever he went and whatever he did. And another pattern, overlying it, incomplete … the threads that would make up this working, Kief’s own working. Its lines and tracings glowed silver in the shadowed corners of the room, paler but still visible toward the center. Behind and outside the patterns lay the sturdy glowing cable of the Institute Circle’s combined will, a bright loop waiting to be grasped.

  Kief sank deeper into meditation, into the inner world of metaphor and imagery that shaped and directed a Mage’s will. In that place, he stood on barren ground, under a hot sun in a hazy-pale sky. All around him were tangled thornbushes. He stood on a path overgrown with them, and there was something up ahead that he couldn’t see, in the midst of the thorns. He was pushing his way through, pushing; the thorns caught at his flesh and tore it until it bled.

  Where were his robes, his mask? Here in his inner world, he didn’t have them, only the light summer clothing he used to wear as a student in Hanilat. His staff … he still had his staff. He was still a Mage.

  A Mage, and he had to reach the thing he knew was somewhere ahead of him. It was waiting for him, it needed to be found, but the thorns were keeping him away.

  Then the inner landscape changed, and he saw the world through a double vision: He was in the wilderness of thorns, and at the same time he was in the workroom under the glaring white of the overhead light. He saw himself rising to his feet, and heard his voice saying, “The working needs power; who will match me?”

  Across the Circle, he saw his Second rise, and Giesye answered, “I will.”

  The gel-vat in the center of the chalked circle impeded them for a few moments, but not for long; Giesye held her place, and Kief came around to meet her on the far side. They had scarcely come into fighting distance when he struck the first blow, coming in hard to his Second’s leg—a blow meant to bruise and weaken, to leave the other limping for the rest of the fight, while the energy of their opposition built and built.

  Giesye was fast, though, as fast in movement as in speech; she caught the blow on her staff and turned it aside. Kief’s hand and arm vibrated with the impact as wood struck wood. Another heartbeat, and the Second was striking another blow. Kief’s head would have been in its way, but he slipped aside and felt the rush of air against his cheek as the staff whistled past.

  In among the thorns, he pushed onward. The bushes grew thicker there, and the ground was rising. The eiran twined in and out among the thorny branches, hanging over the bushes like tattered lace. He could see patterns in the lace, old patterns discarded and new ones half-complete. One of them had the brightness of the Institute’s working threaded through it. Cords from that pattern led him deeper into the heart of the thorns.

  He was bleeding now where the branches parted and swung back against him, or caught at him and tried to pull him down. A pain in his side … Giesye had gotten past his guard, a strong blow, ribs broken or worse. Power flowed out into the working, bright silver in all the patterns. His staff smashed against the Second’s right arm, breaking bone—the arm hung limp. Giesye switched the staff to her left hand, trailing sparks of silver with the movement, and struck out at him again.

  Kief fought his way through the overgrown thornbushes, holding on to the strong cable of the Institute’s working, letting it support him as he pushed farther inward. A last ripping and tearing of the flesh, and he was there, looking down at what lay in the heart of the thorns.

  Himself. Pale and unbreathing and empty.

  Giesye’s blows were near to driving him down. How long had they been fighting? Minutes? Hours? He couldn’t tell. He opened himself up to the power in the eiran and let it fill him, then let the power out again in a last desperate strike against his partner and opponent.

  As the universe wills.

  He looked down at his own body, lying on bare rock amid the thorns, and saw moving across it the wheeling shadows of carrion birds circ
ling overhead. If he lay there much longer, the scavengers would take him.

  As the universe wills.

  He did the necessary thing. This was dream and vision, and it was easy once he made the decision—slipping out of himself standing over himself, and seeing himself fade away into the patterns before the power of the eiran flowed into him and he stood up and walked away.

  And rose from the gel-vat in the workroom, naked and cold in the sterile air. Two bodies lay on the floor, and red blood smeared the tiles beneath them. People came forward with sponges, with towels, with thick robes, washing and drying and warming him, as though his presence were something remarkable.

  He stepped over to look down at the two lying on the floor. When he spoke, his voice sounded unfamiliar to his ears. “Are they dead?”

  “No.” The physician? Yes. Him. “The medical aiketen can deal with all of their injuries. The problem is that until they wake, we don’t know which one of them—well, which one of them is you.”

  He knelt. This body differed slightly in its proportions from the one he was used to. Reaching out to the nearer of the two lying on the floor, he turned the unconscious body over and took off its plastic hardmask. Curly hair; streaks of premature grey; earring.

  “This one.”

  13:

  ERAASI: HANILAT ENTIBOR: AN-JEMAYNE NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER: THE VOID

  Grif Egelt was still fuming when he returned to his office at sus-Peledaen Hanilat headquarters. The fact that Natelth sus-Khalgath couldn’t be bothered to work in the same building as everybody else in the fleet-family—which meant that Egelt had to travel halfway across the city and back again every time the head man wanted a personal report—only served to increase his dissatisfaction with the way the meeting had gone.

  “What a right bastard!” Egelt snarled as soon as the doorway to the outer office closed behind him. “If I didn’t …”

  “Yeah, you’d quit,” said his second-in-command. Hussav lacked Egelt’s aspirations toward outer-family status—as an out-islander, and one from common working stock at that, he knew that his chances were limited enough to be in effect nonexistent—and Lord Natelth’s moods and caprices bore less heavily on him as a result. “Other than explaining to you that he has a really big prick, what tidbits of information did our honored employer have for us?”

  “He’s got a picture of the kidnapper,” Egelt said. He pulled the slide on the house-mind player, and brought up the image. Only quarter-size this time—Egelt didn’t feel the need to impress anyone, unlike some people he could name. “So, what do you think?”

  Hussav walked slowly around the hovering image, looking at it from all angles before answering. “With that face, he’s not Hanilat-Eraasian, that’s for sure.”

  “Not by blood, anyhow. Where he lives is another question.”

  “Too true. We wouldn’t happen to know where the image came from, would we?”

  Egelt shook his head. “Lady Isayana took some of the blood, but what she did with it after that … let’s say that I don’t want to know. That woman frightens me.”

  “You knew going in that talking to inner family was part of the job,” said Hussav without sympathy. “And better you than me.”

  “You warm my heart, Jyriom.” Egelt tapped the player, and brought up the associated data files that had accompanied the image. “What’s important right now is the information our employer has so kindly provided.”

  “There’s certainly a lot of it,” Hussav said after a moment. “We can start doing match and switch with the public databases, but that’ll take a long time.”

  “Look for connections,” Egelt said. “Start with family members—the closer in, the better. Lady Isayana, for starters.”

  “Because she spooks you?”

  “Because she stands to lose the most if His Anxiety takes a wife,” Egelt said. “Check out everybody: inner-family, outer-family, allied families, in that order.” He paused to draw himself a cup of yellow uffa from the office pot. The sharp, spicy smell rose up to tickle his nostrils. “And the same for all the girl’s families as well.”

  “That’ll go a lot quicker,” said Hussav. “Most of them are dead.”

  “So what are you waiting for? We aren’t getting paid by the hour here.” Egelt pushed a button on his desk and spoke to the outer office. “I need a secure line to Public Order and I need everything from that raid in North Hanilat, and I need them both right now.”

  He drank some of the uffa. It was too hot and burned his lips and tongue. The pain would give him something to think about while he waited for results to come back.

  “Well, I’ll be a greased rocklizard,” Hussav said, not too much later. “Chief, have you ever thought of taking up with the Circles?”

  “I prefer my head clear and my bones unbroken, thank you. What is it?”

  “A hit,” Hussav said. “Look. This guy here—sus-Dariv outer-family by current contract. Merchant-captain.”

  Egelt walked over to look at Hussav’s results. “I don’t suppose you know where he is right now, do you?”

  “Grounded here in Hanilat not long ago. Apparently hung around doing typical pilot-things afterward—looking for a cargo, mostly. Right now … I’m working on it … right now he’s at the port.”

  “Get him. Get him in here, as soon as … no, I’ll go myself. Don’t let him—”

  “Too late,” Hussav said. “He’s moving. His ship is heading for—hang on; let me figure it—heading for what looks like one of the smaller fields out in sus-Dariv territory. At least that’s where he said he was going.”

  “Get people on him,” Egelt said at once. “And let the orbital station know. Do not harm him, do not slow him, do not let him know that we’re watching, but I want to know where he’s going before he does, and I want to arrive there first, too.”

  “I can get you to the Antipodes and—Serpent Station, that’s where he’s going. By private flyer.”

  “Right, get me moving. And keep a link open to me, best speed. I’ll need forces when I get there.”

  “In sus-Dariv territory? Good luck.”

  “Yeah, get the fleet-Circle on it, too. I’m so gone that ‘gone’ is still here in comparison.”

  And with that, Egelt left the office, headed for the family’s field behind the Hanilat complex.

  The workroom smelled of sweat, and the chemicals in the gel-vat, and blood. Environmental controls labored noisily to bring the air back down to a proper laboratory coolness and sterility, but so far they’d had little success. Kief’s Mages still maintained their positions around the perimeter of the white circle, but the working no longer held them in its grip. They were bone-tired and fearful, and needed only the word of dismissal to send them home.

  Two black-clad bodies lay, scarcely breathing, in the center of the circle next to the gel-vat. Kief stood over them, wrapped in the absorbent robe that Isayana and her tame physician had given to his replicant body when he first stepped naked from the vat. He bent down—still learning the reactions and dimensions of this new form—and picked up the Mage-staff from what had been his own hand only a few minutes ago.

  His new hand found the smooth black wood unfamiliar to the touch, but his mind recognized the sensation of grasping it, and of moving it through the basic positions. The hands of this new body were narrower than the ones before, and not so heavy-boned in the wrists and knuckles, but they were strong and sinewy, with a good grip to them. The body itself felt tough and well coordinated; it didn’t yet have the long-trained skills and reflexes of his old one, but—given time and work—it could learn.

  He looked at his Circle-Mages. They’d seen him pick up his staff; they’d heard him name his old body as the one emptied out to fill Isayana’s replicant. Now to see if they would acknowledge his authority in this form as well.

  “You’ve done good work tonight,” he said to them. “Go home now and rest.”

  The senior Mage under Giesye—perhaps he should be named Thir
d, Kief thought, if the Circle was going to do more workings of this magnitude—stood up, a little unsteady on his feet. “Will you be well, etaze?”

  “I will be well, Chei.” Kief allowed himself to smile. The expression felt different on his new face. “Both of me, and Giesye as well. Be proud, all of you—our Circle has done a new thing tonight, and done it splendidly.”

  One by one, the Mages stood up and left the circle, moving stiffly and wearily after the long time spent kneeling. When they were gone, Kief went back to where Isayana and her physician stood. They also looked tired and worn, as if they had kept a long vigil, but with a profound satisfaction underlying their fatigue.

  He caught Isayana’s eye with some difficulty—he didn’t think she quite thought of this new form as human yet—and gestured toward the two bodies lying at his feet. “Do you have a place here to care for them?”

  “Yes,” said Isayana. “I made certain to put in a full setup when I began this project. But—both of them? You aren’t going to go back in?”

  “I couldn’t go back now even if I wanted to,” he told her. “The working is over.”

  The physician was frowning at him. “Making the transfer nearly killed you and the other Mage—”

  “Giesye. My Second.”

  “—and you’re saying it’s going to take the same thing to put you back?”

  “Not the same thing.” Kief shook his head, impatient at the other man’s lack of basic understanding. For the first time in years, the movement didn’t bring with it a touch of metal against his neck and jaw; his new body didn’t have an earring to swing and tickle against his skin. “Every working is different.”

  “If you say so.” The physician was frowning like a man who’s discovered an ugly worm coiled up inside a favored fruit. “I don’t think we have an efficient process here.”