The New Space Opera 2

by Gardner Dozois

  ~Pilot Candidate Helena Tchahl, step forward.~

  Carl didn’t know her. She was wearing a brown tunic with yellow panels, so there was quiet acceptance when a ribbon-path carried her to a bay that turned out to be empty.

  ~No ship. This candidate has a different path to follow.~

  The ribbon-path took her back down, to a platform floating off to one side. Where the losers waited. Tchahl lowered her head, and Carl thought she might be crying, even though her colors indicated that life on a realspace world was what she wanted.

  I wish I wasn’t wearing black.

  There was no escaping humiliation now.

  ~Pilot Candidate Riley O’Mara, step forward.~

  Carl whispered: “Good luck.”

  Riley walked onto the ribbon-path, tensing his shoulders. He looked strong as the path’s flow took him to an opening hangar where a bronze-and-steel ship waited. Tears glistened even as he grinned.

  I can’t do this.

  Soon, Riley had flown out of the floating city, disappearing into golden void. One more triumph.

  I really can’t.

  Somehow Carl remained standing while thirty-one more candidates—he counted—were carried to bays. Twenty-nine of them gained ships. The other two joined Tchahl on the losers’ platform. Shipless Pilots.

  ~Pilot Candidate Carl Blackstone, step forward.~

  The waiting path was sparkling white from luminescence and from the blurring of Carl’s eyes, peripheral vision darkening under stress. Blood-rush washed in his ears. It was hard to remain steady as the path began to flow, carrying him over the chasm, up to the Great Shield where shame was waiting.

  A scallop-door retracted to reveal an empty bay.

  This is awful.

  He looked back, unable to make out faces, just patches of color.

  ~No ship. This candidate has a different path to follow.~

  Then the ribbon-path bore him down to the platform where Tchahl and the other failures waited. Shaking, he took his place, trying to accept what was happening. Worse than expected, and he’d known it would be bad.

  He looked up only twice: once when Soo Lin gained his ship, a bronze-and-turquoise vessel with bold curves; again when Marina rose for judgment.

  In the holo, her face was radiant, and no wonder. Her ship was of sweeping silver, a strong yet elegant flower, a spreading teardrop with no need for the usual delta-wings. For such a striking ship to have grown in Ascension Annex, her Pilot must be a person of unusual talent.

  Carl had always known Marina was special.

  Applause began even before the ship took her inside. Then she was soaring through a tunnel to golden space, launching into fractal infinity, heading for Mandelbrot Nebula: the boldest choice for a maiden flight. The cheering lasted after the holo faded.

  On the losers’ platform, Carl began to cry.

  He drifts in golden sleep.

  One of the neurolinguistics instructors, back when Carl was an Academy student with years to go before humiliation, talked about yawning, the way that yawning was an interesting phenomenon, although it tired some people as it made them want to yawn now when they thought about—

  Carl had been the first to laugh, fighting down the yawn that everyone was starting to manifest. A holoscan had flared—tuned to Soo Lin—showing activity in the left cortex, orchestrated with the voice- and semantic-processing centers of the right hemisphere. And it had delineated the changing neurology—in the precuneus nucleus and anterior cingulate—that forms the basis of hypnosis, because the instructor had used subtle tonality to slip mesmeric suggestions into his voice.

  Now, though Carl is asleep, his hand is rising.

  Some part of him is aware of golden light flooding his surroundings, passing through everything, while his sense of time vibrates to the possibility of fractal flow. There is no place he can be except mu-space. His hand is almost at the delta-band—

  No!

  —when everything grows cold, and his hand drops back. The ship is plunging into realspace. He has missed his chance.

  Someone powers off the delta-band and pulls it from his forehead. “Ugh.” He squints, trying to focus. “Where—? Ugh.”

  “Where are we?” It sounds like the father of the family. “What kind of ship is this?”

  Carl pushes himself up, puts one foot on the floor, ready to stand, then decides to stay where he is. Flowmetal walls have configured into a row of nozzles: the business end of smasers. Coherent smartatoms can tear through anything.

  An invisible smartmiasma would be even deadlier, but less intimidating. Then again, this has to be a Zajinet ship, and their understanding of psychology is hard to judge.

  A short laugh sounds from Carl’s left. Scarface is sitting up, staring at Xala.

  “This ain’t no scheduled stop,” he says. “This is a robbery.”

  Xala stares back, her face impassive. But her motile tattoos are scrolling across her scalp with agitated speed.

  “No robbery,” she says. “We have a little problem.”

  The other false priests are also sitting, making no attempt to leave their couches. They’ve seen the smasers. Luckily, the children are still asleep. Xala has removed the delta-bands only from the adults.

  “It’s the Pilots, isn’t it?” moans the kids’ father.

  “Say what?”

  “They’re coming to get us, to blow us out of—”

  “Oh, shut up,” says Xala. “Someone here isn’t who they claim to be.”

  Among the “priests,” only Graybeard appears calm, his brown eyes tranquil, as if in prayer. The others look ready for violence.

  “Look, sister,” says Scarface. “Just ’cause we have the collars and all, doesn’t mean we’re really pretending to—”

  “One of you isn’t quite human.”

  Oh, shit.

  How can they know? Did they see his hand rise under autohypnotic suggestion while he was deep in coma?

  I can’t move faster than a smaser beam.

  If they want him to die, he’s going to. Today, now, with memories of humiliation refreshed in his mind by the sight of Marina in Fairwell Rotunda. Churning waves of acid shift inside him, a neurochemical tide, a certainty of ending.

  He might as well try something.

  Now.

  He is ready to move, but Graybeard appears to flicker among dark shadows and then he’s behind Xala, one hand cupping her chin, the other at the back of her neck. She is between him and the row of nozzles. The delta-bands lie at her feet.

  “Bad mistake.” Graybeard’s voice is gentle. “Threatening your passengers.”

  “Too right.” Scarface swings his feet to the deck. “We ought to—”

  “Stay where you are,” says Graybeard.

  Scarface holds himself still. So does Carl.

  Not me. She didn’t mean me.

  The false priests have also frozen. They’re professionals, trying to assess the tactical situation.

  “Mmph.”

  “No need to speak, sweetheart.” Graybeard tightens his grip on Xala. “I’m talking to your masters. I feel you out there, you bastards.”

  For a second, shards of darkness appear to revolve through the air, then nothing. What the hell is happening?

  There is an awful calmness in Graybeard’s voice.

  “Change of plans,” he says to Scarface. “We’re going to drop off as before, but a different place, and you’re not coming with me.”

  “Bug out?”

  “Back to Molsin, then your individual routes, which I don’t want to know. They’re not compromised.”

  “But we—”

  “And you’ve already been paid,” says Graybeard. “Check now, if you like.”

  Xala’s skin is white where his fingers are digging around her mouth. He backs away, pulling her with him, until they’re standing beside something on the deck. The case he was carrying earlier.

  One of the fake priests examines a financial holovolume, nodding.

>   “It’s all there.”

  Behind him, the flowmetal wall begins to split and curl apart. He steps aside. In the opening, a fiery lattice of red light is floating. Beside it, what appears to be a mass of blue sand, about the same size, stands on the deck.

  They are Zajinets. The glowing lattice is their natural form. Sometimes they clothe themselves in matter: gravel, sand, organic material. The red entity begins to pulse, which may be a sign of emotion; but with Zajinets, nobody knows.

  “You both came,” says Graybeard. “That’s nice.”

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  The quadruple communication comes from the unclothed Zajinet, though how Carl knows this, and how he can hear the words which are not truly sound, he has no idea. Each Zajinet mind is a quantum superposition of overlaying neural plexi—or so the theory goes. He never expected to meet one in person.

  Every conflict between Zajinets and Pilots has been short-lived, no matter how violent. No one knows what to make of that.

  “I think you’re bluffing.” Graybeard squeezes Xala. “I think you do care about her.”

  Carl blinks.

  He understands it?

  This may be the strangest thing to have happened today. What did Xala say? One of you isn’t quite human. And the subject of her sentence turns out to be Graybeard.

  Those shards of darkness, a shift in nothingness…a motion of absence. Right now, Graybeard looks like an ordinary person, but it’s some kind of facade.

  Xala’s scalp tattoos are writhing. Her eyes are bulging.

  You know the lightning.

  It’s a memory, the voice of one of his instructors.

  You know how fast it moves.

  The words can trigger behavior laid down below the conscious level, in the amygdala where the brain reacts at speed.

  Become the lightning.

  It’s time to move. Carl shifts forward just as Graybeard’s tu-ring flares red, and the shining Zajinet’s lattice-form is tugged as if caught on a hook.

  Carl pulls himself back.

  “You’ll drop me off at a location you know well,” Graybeard tells the Zajinets. “And you’ll do it for your own sakes as well as the woman’s.”

  Just for a second, there appears to be a redness in the air.

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  Graybeard smiles.

  “Agreed. Drop me alone at the highway station. I’ll kill the link as you move onward.”

  Then Graybeard drags Xala back against the wall, and pulls her down with him so they are sitting on the deck, as close as lovers.

  “Do the honors, will you?” he asks Scarface, nodding to the bands that Xala dropped.

  “What? You mean the delta-bands?”

  “Right.” With a stare in the direction of the Zajinets: “Since we’re about to get going again.”

  As the flowmetal wall begins to seal up, the Zajinets are already moving out of sight in the corridor.

  Scarface offers delta-bands to the mother and father.

  “Put them on, press here”—he points—“and you’ll sleep. Otherwise, mu-space will send you insane.”

  He stops and looks at Graybeard.

  “I don’t like this. You’re going to be the last to sleep, right?”

  “You’ve been paid.”

  “That’s the reason I’m going along with it.”

  He resumes handing out the delta-bands.

  “You don’t frighten easily”—Graybeard turns to Carl—“for an academic.”

  Carl finds himself swallowing.

  “Er…I’m scared.” It’s easy to allow his voice to vibrate. “Believe me.”

  “Good.”

  Carl isn’t just frightened. He’s trying to work out what Graybeard did with his tu-ring that forced the Zajinets to obey. Right now, the smaser nozzles are melting back into the wall, and he senses the ship getting ready for mu-space.

  “Put the band on, Professor.”

  Shit.

  He lies back, places the band on his forehead, and reaches up. Then his eyelids flutter as his hand drops down.

  “There you go, Xala.” Graybeard’s voice. “Sweet dreams.”

  “That’s everyone.” This sounds like Scarface.

  “After you.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Carl waits. Either they think he’s pressed the band or they believe it doesn’t matter, that he’s only seconds away from being driven insane by the fractal reality of mu-space.

  Silence.

  Everyone else is probably asleep. If he’s quick, he might be able to—

  Transition.

  Golden light is flooding through him. He opens his eyes.

  At last.

  He’s back in the continuum where he belongs. And this time, he’s awake.

  The Logos Library, infinite within its boundaries, held an uncountable number of carrels: spaces for solo study or simple retreat. In one of them, Carl sat at a desk and cried.

  The party had been—still was, elsewhere—a noisy, energetic maelstrom of pulsing music and triumphant fun, laughter, and pride, toasts to new beginnings, a celebration of the hundred and nineteen vessels added to the fleet for the benefit of humanity at large. He had suffered through it, avoiding his parents but knowing that he would have to face Marina. And, eventually, he did.

  “I’m sorry.” Her triangular features had saddened. “We’ll still be…friends.”

  “Right. You’ll be exploring the galaxy and I’ll—” He had pushed out a breath, trying to expel his bitterness. “You did so well. Really, really well.”

  Her pleasure had been real as she smiled. Amazed pleasure.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  “One terrific ship. Everyone’s talking about her.”

  “Yes. Look, I have to go see Commodore Durana.”

  “Daredevil Durana?”

  “She wants to talk to me. Would you believe it?”

  “That’s really—”

  “See you around, Carl.”

  Turning away, she had dipped her head. They had all been drilled in the neurophysiology of communication, and knew when to hide their own reactions. But Carl had already begun his extra training, had learned to read the minutiae of gesture and movement, and wished he hadn’t. In her eyes, in the tightening of the muscles above her upper lip, she had broadcast her message in clear.

  A part of her despised him.

  Marina…

  Public shame had dissolved whatever compelling image she’d held of Carl. Words had risen up inside him then, a plea for new understanding, but she had already moved into the mass of happy, celebrating Pilots. Fighting down emotion and the urge to blurt out his feelings, he had found a quiet exit and used it.

  Everything had changed the moment she had turned away.

  I loved you.

  But that was over. It had to be over.

  Now, as he sat in the lonely carrel amid stacks of infocrystals, he felt as if something had severed the cord of his life. The old part had been cut away from the new, for everything was different now.

  Focusing on breathing, the simplicity of inhale-exhale, he began to center himself.

  ~It’s time.~

  When he looked up, he felt calm.

  “I know,” he said.

  With golden mu-space energy flowing through him, he lies on the couch, feeling ready. Whatever happens next, it will be in his own continuum, where he truly comes alive. For someone like him, this is what makes a dual life worthwhile.

  He throws the delta-band aside and sits up. Everyone is sleeping: Graybeard slumped against the wall, Xala curled beside him, the others on their couches.

  “Now we’ll see.”

  Smiling, he powers up his tu-ring’s weaponry. In fr
ont of him, the flowmetal wall pulls apart, revealing the fore-to-aft corridor.

  Time to do it.

  Forget the past, for this is where he belongs, in places and moments like this.

  On the edge.

  Leaving the Logos Library, he took a quiet route, bypassing Borges Boulevard and the Great Shield, entering Ascension Annex through an obscure entrance. The bronze-petal door folded back at his approach. Inside, the floor pulled him along, through a screen of sapphire light, then another of coruscating emerald. Finally, the floor swirled to a halt in a great ovoid hall where no one was waiting.

  “I’m here.”

  An oval of wallspace melted away, allowing a blocky figure to enter. Rolled-back sleeves revealed massive forearms. Shaven-headed and jet-eyed, he stared at Carl.

  “Your emotional state, Pilot Candidate?”

  As far as the rest of Labyrinth was concerned, Carl was a candidate no longer.

  “Surviving, Commander.”

  “You got through the celebrations.”

  “Yes.” Carl thought of Marina, her look of contempt burned in his mind forever. “With no desire to go back and explain myself.”

  “Not even a little?”

  Carl took the question seriously, as Commander Gould intended.

  “None, sir. Not now.”

  Gould smiled. “Then it’s time to face the real ordeal, don’t you think?”

  The commander led the way to the far wall. It shimmered, sparkled, transformed into a lattice of floating white stars, and then dissolved. Beyond was a great bluish hangar bay, and inside—

  My God.

  —hung a black dart of a ship with fine scarlet edging. Small compared to others, but this one would never carry passengers or cargo. Her power capacity was orders of magnitude above normal. Even at a glance, he could tell that she had maneuverability and firepower that were outstanding.

  She’s beautiful.

  Powerful, with an air of being on the brink of speeding movement, on the edge of dynamic balance, like a sprinter in motion…she was designed to hold one Pilot, only him.

  So beautiful.

  Carl Blackstone, Pilot.

  “Take her out, son.” Commander Gould’s hand was on his shoulder.