The real problems cropped up, however, when they entered certain quantum zones that weren’t as easily handled as others were. Straight subspace or hyperspace zones were relatively simple for the ship to transit and the controls for the ship were fairly straightforward. This was also true of several of the highly mystical regions they had crossed, where entire other mechanisms emerged from the walls and converted the control sphere into some sort of sorcerer’s workshop and they directed the ship by waving their hands through the air in strange patterns. The problem was when zones were mixtures of both the technical and the mystical in a variety of shades, flavors, and mixtures which required all kinds of handles, dances, levers, incantations, knobs, and at least twelve more hands than were available at the moment.
Lewis stood up from the chair, stretching on uncertain legs to try and push the stiffness out of her muscles. “What say we don’t try that again right away. Mevin?”
“Yes, Lieutenant Lewis?” came the voice of the synthetic mind from seemingly everywhere in the room at once.
“Is the ship stable and stationary?”
“Yes, Lieutenant Lewis. The ship is stationary and stable relative to the motion of the local stars.”
“Great—now all we need to know is where the hell are we,” Lewis said, reaching up to rub the bridge of her nose tiredly.
“We are the hell in deep space with the nearest inhabited system being the hell five light years coreward at the hell Leuken system,” Mevin replied at once.
“Really, Elizabeth, if you’re going to teach the synth to swear, you at least could do a proper job of it,” Ellerby said, rubbing his own temples.
“I think it’s disgusting,” Tobler chimed in, perhaps a bit too seriously. “Mevin’s only been awake for seven years. I think you’re a bad influence on him, Lewis.”
Lewis eyed the brown-haired Tobler as though the doctor had just grown flowers out of both ears. Tobler hadn’t been quite right ever since their fine little NASA spacecraft had been brutally boarded by the Irindris what seemed like several lifetimes ago but which, in reality, must have only been a few weeks. She had shown signs of instability then, but Lewis was pretty sure that the woman had gotten over it. Now that surety was waning.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Lewis said with finality.
“On the contrary,” Ellerby said with a sepulchral voice heavy with his own depression, “I thought we were making tremendous progress for being completely lost.”
“We are not completely lost!” Lewis leaned over the console and stabbed at a few display protrusions. The room around the platform dissolved into a sphere of grids, stars, symbols, and flashing lines in various neon colors. The course lines were three-dimensional with several of them seeming to pass directly through the air over the instrument panels arrayed before them. Lewis’s voice was pointedly triumphant. “See!”
Ellerby raised his head with considerable effort. “Lewis … where are we supposed to be?”
Lewis looked up at the chart drifting slowly around them.
“Over there,” she said, pointing her right hand at the flashing blue hexagon floating at the end of a deep purple line nearly off the chart.
“And where are we now?” Ellerby sighed.
Lewis squinted slightly as she considered the charts.
“We are here,” she said, pointing with her left hand. A red box at the end of a yellow line flashed at the opposite extreme of the chart.
“Exactly.” Ellerby nodded wearily, his eyes unfocused as his brain idled in its own misery. “Right in the middle of Lost. Well, perhaps not exactly in the middle … We might be just left of Lost … Or perhaps a few miles off a vector from Lost … But I’m sure we’re pretty close to Lost, wherever we are.”
“Hey!” Lewis said, her voice half-cheerful and half-pleading. She knew it was time to rally the troops. “This is a mission of exploration! We’re still astronauts and we still have a job to do! We’re Earth’s ambassadors to the stars. We have a duty to return home and report, to bring back the knowledge we have gained.”
“ ‘Earth’s ambassadors to the stars’?” Ellerby repeated in disbelief. “Is that what we were doing on that planet last week? We landed our ship right in the middle of their harvest festival!”
“That was no one’s fault,” Lewis countered, showing an edge of anger that was never very far from her surface. “The approach sensors said it was an open field—who knew it was a flat tent?”
“They were awfully nice about it,” Tobler said more to herself than anyone else. “I thought it was sweet the way they all bowed down and worshipped us.”
“They weren’t worshipping us,” Ellerby corrected wearily. “They were worshipping the saucer.”
“I don’t know why any of us should feel embarrassed about that,” Lewis snapped. “No harm was done. The point is that we had landed for fresh provisions—perhaps it didn’t go exactly as we had planned but we did get some very nice fruit out of the deal.”
“The point is,” Ellerby shot back, “that we haven’t got a clue just where the hell we are going! Not only do we not know where we’re going”—the frustrated astronaut pointed at the diverging and rather convoluted course lines on the chart—“but we can’t even get where we want to go in search of where we’re going!”
Ellerby had spoken with such conviction that Lewis took a moment to consider his words carefully, somehow convinced that he had actually said something meaningful. After a moment’s careful reflection, however, she realized that he had not. The exercise left her disoriented and confused.
“So,” Lewis said after a moment to regain her mental balance, “just what would you propose, Lieutenant Ellerby?”
“I don’t know!” Ellerby shouted, “but anything has got to be better than just bouncing from star to star hoping to run into our little planet out there!”
“Better?” Lewis shouted back. “Perhaps you would like to send out an SOS over your little Boy-Scout shortwave radio set …”
Tobler’s voice was quiet. “Well, maybe we could …”
Lewis was in full tirade now: she didn’t even hear Tobler. “… Or perhaps you would like to flag down a passing spacecraft with your towel …”
“… Er, I heard that might work in some alternate quantum indexes,” Tobler persisted in trying to cut into the conversation, “but what I really had in mind was something simpler …”
“… Or perhaps,” Lewis continued venting at the reddening face of the large man before her, “you would like to consult some crystal ball for a heading and direction, Mister Ellerby, big shot astronaut …”
Tobler tried raising her voice a little more. “Actually, that would work on the last planet we visited, but what I actually thought was …”
“… But until you come up with something better than what I’m offering …”
“Lieutenant Lewis?” Tobler insisted.
“What!” Lewis screamed.
The sound shocked Tobler so badly it made her flinch. For several moments the only sound in the command sphere was Lewis’s ragged breathing.
Lewis regained control of herself, took a deep breath and spoke as evenly as her breath would allow. “Dr. Tobler. What do you want to say?”
“I’ve been thinking … Well, I just think we should ask for directions.”
Lewis was suddenly convinced that this poor woman standing before her had, indeed, gone completely over the edge of sanity. In sudden compassion, Lewis put her arms around the woman and patted her on the back as she spoke kindly into her ear. “Tobler … Marilyn … we can’t just pull over to a gas station, dear.”
“Well, I know that!” Tobler said with indignation as she stood awkwardly in Lewis’s embrace. “I mean, why don’t we just ask Griffiths?”
Lewis still held the woman but suddenly quit patting her soothingly on the back. “Griffiths?”
“Of course, Griffiths!” Tobler said. “He’s the one who talks to that Mantle of Wisdom device. He said hims
elf that it’s as old as that Kendis-dai legend they kept talking about …”
Lewis’s eyes went wide. She looked with sudden enlightenment at Ellerby.
“My God,” Ellerby murmured. “She’s right! That synth does date back to Kendis-dai!”
“And Kendis-dai knew where Earth was!” Lewis suddenly smiled. She grabbed Tobler’s head with both hands and planted a kiss on her forehead. “You’re right! Why didn’t we think of it? We don’t have to go searching the stars for Earth—Griffiths can tell us exactly where to find it!”
Ellerby smiled. He suddenly had hope that he might yet make it back to his wife and children. “How are we ever going to explain that it took this long for us to come up with this?”
“Don’t worry, Ellerby,” Lewis said, seated again at the console, “we’ll fix the whole thing in the ship’s log and no one will ever be the wiser. Mevin?”
“Yes, Lieutenant Lewis?”
“Turn this oversized lunch-plate around! We’re going back to Avadon!”
Another star. Another world. Both were not so far removed from Avadon as pertained to the measurement of the heavens, but far enough removed in the minds of those present who contemplated such things.
Another fleet. Another ship.
The lights faded at her approach. The panels dimmed their displays in reverence. She walked with confident gait onto the bridge of the planetary assault ship D’Rapiene, the edges of her cape barely whispering above the polished floor. Each source of illumination turned from her, draping her cloaked face in shadow. To either side of her, several islands of instrument consoles dimmed as well; the chairs situated before them were empty and useless. She climbed the three short steps up to the elevated platform in the center of the bridge, its elegant and luxurious chair falling into darkness as she settled into it.
She was a Sentinel. Darkness was her due.
A great panorama lay before her through the long curve of the observation portal. Her practiced eye could see the fleet arranging itself before her—to her very will, she thrilled at reminding herself.
Two TyRen warriors approached the throne she had created for herself. Each was finished in jet-black, a mark of shame that they had taken upon themselves. Many of their brothers had fallen prey to the wiles of the evil ones and the lies of this so-called Mantle of Kendis-dai. Those who remained true to the faith of the Order were mortified that their brothers should so easily have been persuaded to abandon the promise of free will and had banded against them in defense of the false prophet Griffiths. They wore their new colors in bereavement, vowing to avenge the wrong done to their honor, and believed themselves alone to be the true TyRen.
“Mistress Sentinel,” rumbled both TyRen in unison. “You have summoned us. We live to obey.”
Neither found any contradiction between their unquestioning obedience and their desire for free will.
“What is the news from Avadon?” came the sultry voice from the shadowy folds of the robe. “Has Targ of Gandri completed his mission?”
“No, Sentinel.”
“What?”
“Targ of Gandri has failed to take control of the Mantle and has failed in his attempt to destroy the false prophet Griffiths,” the TyRen continued, unheeding of the anger which his words had aroused in the Sentinel. She had demanded the information; it would have been impossible for the synthetic mind of the TyRen not to provide it.
The Sentinel leaned back once more in the great chair. “So, Targ seems finally to have met his match. This was—not unforeseen, my children. It was not probable, but it was anticipated. Had he succeeded, then the Sentinels were in place to take advantage of his success. We now must succeed where he has failed.”
Silence filled the bridge.
“What is your bidding, Sentinel?”
“Inform the fleet,” she snapped. “We are leaving at once for Avadon.”
Targ of Gandri sat on the cold floor, his head against the damp stone wall. The sorcerer’s hands were shackled, secured to great loops in the wall by long chains. He could move about the cell in a limited way but never quite reach the heavy metal door that was the sole exit from the tomb.
Not that Targ minded that much—he was still alive, and while there is still breath left in a sorcerer, there is the promise of escape. He had been completely spent from the fiasco at the Cathedral of the Mantle three days before. When at last the shield had collapsed around him, the TyRen had surrounded him. He was certain at that moment that his death would be reasonably swift. Yet the TyRen had not dispatched him at once, as he had assumed they would, but had instead surrounded him—protecting him from the screaming mob that no doubt would have been more than happy to fulfill his expectations of imminent demise. They brought him here, half carrying through and half flying above the crying, hateful mob that had suddenly filled the streets in search of his blood.
The TyRen had brought him to the dungeons below the Towers of Justice. The structure was magnificent, standing at the third apex of a triangle of streets surrounding the cathedral. Its lines were sweeping and highly ornamental, graceful and symmetrical. It seemed far too beautiful a building for its obviously grim business.
The interior, however, was in stark contrast and did not disappoint his original expectations. The dungeon was well below the level of the street, lit only dimly by passive optical conduits. Here, in the forgotten depths of a forgotten city, the TyRen chained him, and then they left him to await his fate.
Three days passed. Each day the TyRen entered the cell, brought him food, and cared for his essential needs. When they were finished, they left. Targ remained quietly hopeful through it all, for with each passing day the strength of his magic was returning, and with it, his hope.
The priests, he felt sure, must already have been busy summoning the demon-god Gnuktikut. Well, he could handle that. Targ remembered that Griffiths had banned the horrid creature as a means of acquiring information but Griffiths was now gone.
Gone, indeed, Targ thought to himself. Gone for three days now. With Neskat piloting, he could be nearly a quarter of the way across the galaxy. The Vestis Prime could feel the man’s trail growing colder by the moment.
Targ closed his eyes. He looked within himself, felt the strength of the power within and knew that he had rested quite enough. It was time.
Targ’s eyes opened. He smiled.
Never leave a sorcerer time to recover, Griffiths, he thought grimly. Strike one and it always has to be a deathblow. Leave him breathing and he will always have his day.
Targ leaned back against the wall once more, relaxing himself with the repetition patterns he conjured up in his mind. He could feel the power of the stars flow through him. He recognized the ether peculiar to the region of this world. He could touch it with his will, bend the elements of creation within it and order it to his liking.
Slowly his flesh began to fade against the background patterns of the stone in the wall, the outline of his body taking on a golden, luminescent hue. With a sudden rush of air, his gaseous self rushed out from the collar of his robes. The chains that once bound him crashed to the floor amid the pile of cloth.
The golden cloud held its human form in the midst of the room for a few moments, floating in the air and looking about itself. Then it began to thin itself throughout the confined space until it filled every corner of the cell. Nothing was left to be seen except the faintest of golden tint in the air.
14
Detours
“We’re coming up on Avadon!” Ellerby straightened up from his console and turned toward Lewis. “The mystic impeller drives should cut out in about four minutes and we’ll be dropping back into normal space—as if I knew what normal space meant anymore.”
“Don’t worry, Brick.” Lewis grinned as she used her favorite nickname for him. “If this works, then we’ll have you parked on the White House lawn within a week. Still, I don’t think any of us will be able to look up and think of space as being normal ever again.”
&n
bsp; Ellerby smiled back at her. He had left wife and children to come on this mission. Heaven only knew, Lewis thought, just how much he wanted to get back to Earth and erase the words that were, no doubt, already put on his tombstone.
The Phoenix continued to hum through the stars. The stillness of the ship’s interior belied the incredible speed with which it now sailed across the interstellar void. There was little left to do except wait. The ship was on course and stable.
“Say, Tobler,” Lewis asked casually, “have you been able to get in touch with Avadon yet? You’ve gotten that communication panel all lit up but so far no sound.”
“I think it’s working, Lieutenant,” Tobler answered, her brow set with minor frustration. “I’ve followed the sequence down through the hierarchy of menu items several times, but so far no joy.”
“Well, keep at it.” Lewis leaned back in her chair and stretching luxuriously. “If we can get in touch with Griffiths over that comm-system, then perhaps we won’t even have to go to the bother of landing this thing.”
“Gee,” Ellerby said as he leaned over his own panel and scanned the instruments once more, “and I was just getting the hang of it. About two minutes to go now.”
“I was just thinking,” Lewis said, swiveling her chair idly. Her eyes were closed, with both her hands resting comfortably atop her head as she moved. “Is it an innate need or is there something about NASA in particular that demands we count down for every big event in space? I mean, it’s not like one has to hold their breath or—”
“Hey, I’ve got them!” Tobler shouted, nearly jumping out of her chair in her excitement. She quickly began jabbing her fingers at the various controls arrayed before her. “It’s graphics imaging rather than audio, but it’s definitely them!”
Just above the central control pedestal an image sprang into existence. Elegant letters of glowing gold flowed into a three-dimensional display slowly revolving above them.
Nightsword Page 12
