Then time slowed to a crawl, and the transition hit him.
It was Wander’s first full-fledged transition within a starship not bound to the relatively short distances of lightways. He felt an explosion of his awareness, and at the same time a sense of controlled caution. Near to him was someone else with heightened awareness, a trained pilot whose attention was tightly focused upon the destination ahead, and yet who was also observing him. How this was possible, Wander did not know. Yet his senses, expanded by the almost limitless moment of transition, were too clear to be denied. He was being watched.
So instead of extending himself outward as he desired, he held back, caution granting him the ability to hold his awareness to what he could see without being seen. He observed the ship’s direction, watched as the ship made the instantaneous transition in and through n-space, and as the ship powered down after transition, he made a very exact identification of their destination.
Perhaps because the ship’s power-up did not permit an exact destination, or perhaps because they were monitored by some interplanetary defense system, they did not push out of n-space directly on the planet’s surface. Instead, they hovered above and outside the planetary orbit. As the amps powered down and the sense of expanded awareness was gradually lost, Wander’s final view was of a fierce identification blast, a radio signal sent at hyperspeed so that it could not easily be caught and interpreted.
Wander struggled to hold on to his sense of expanded time, but failed. The signal shot away from the ship just as his own awareness was returning to the confines of time and his cramped little cabin.
He sat and waited for what felt like hours after the ship had landed, until the cabin door finally slid back to reveal the pinched-faced escort. He wore what appeared to be a scout’s robe, but one laced with fine silver threads. “You are to come with me,” the young man said sharply, and led him out of the now-empty ship, through the connecting tunnel, and into an empty, endless castle corridor.
****
“This is your chamber,” the escort said, pushing open a stout door identical to all the others.
Wander walked forward and peered inside. Like the door itself, the room was functional and austere. “Why isn’t anything powered here?”
The question seemed to catch his escort off guard. But he recovered swiftly and snapped back, “You’ll find out soon enough. Your meals will be brought to you. Do not leave this chamber until you are summoned.” With that he left, slamming the door behind him.
Wander surveyed the room more closely. Featureless walls, a steel-framed bed with a thin mattress, a single chair, a desk, a dim glow-lamp operating from its own battery source. It all hearkened back to some bygone era. There was a reason for this, he was sure, but at the moment he was too tired to care. Wander stripped off his robe, sprawled on the bunk, pulled the thin blanket over himself, and was instantly asleep.
He awoke uncounted hours later to find that a metal tray had been slipped through a slit at the base of his door. He ate swiftly, the rudimentary meal spiced by hunger. Obviously he was being watched, for the instant he set the tray aside, the door was pushed back to reveal the same young escort. “Here,” he said, “put this on.”
Wander accepted the gray-brown robe, felt the coarse material, and started to protest. But a glance at the escort’s face told him the young man expected him to argue, and had already prepared a harsh retort. Instead, he turned his attention to a series of dark markings that extended out of the escort’s sleeve and traced their way across the back of his left hand. “What is that?”
The escort looked down, smirked, and drew back the robe further. A tattoo of a three-headed serpent coiled up his arm, fangs bared, vicious and deadly. “It is the sign.”
“Sign of what?”
“That I have challenged the beast and won.”
Wander studied the pinched, hardened face. “The beast?”
“You will see soon enough.” The young man drew himself up to his full height and intoned, “Are you prepared?”
Wander slipped the robe over his head and stood. “Am I what?”
“No, of course not. How could you be?” The young man spoke with the formal tones of one reciting something well memorized. “You know not what is to come.”
Uncertain of how to respond, Wander stood and waited.
“You who were once a scout now have no position, for what was earned elsewhere has no meaning here. You who were once labeled and known are now nameless and of no account. You will regain your name only when it has been earned here.”
Labeled. As though all that had come before was nothing. Wander felt the heat rise within him.
“Once you had friends. Now none except the one assigned this duty will show you his face, for you are nothing and no one.”
Before Wander could respond, the escort wheeled about and passed through the open door. “Follow me. It is time for your testing.”
Wander walked down the corridor in resentful silence. He was feeling much stronger now, and the anger surged through his frame. Kidnapped, torn from Consuela’s arms, taken across the length and breadth of the empire, and now treated like a nameless nothing. Wander walked a pace behind the escort and bored holes in the young man’s silver-threaded robe with his stare.
Without warning, the escort jinked and entered a tall open space. Wander hesitated, for in his befuddled state he could have sworn that an instant before there had been nothing to his left but more stone wall. The escort turned and stood waiting.
Wander stepped across the unadorned threshold and entered a chamber perhaps fifteen paces to a side, with lofty ceilings supported by great sweeping arches.
“Think you have already been tested?” The escort’s words bounced back and forth within the empty chamber. “You shall soon think again.”
The words sounded to Wander like a ritual chant. A thought struck him and he spun about, only to find that the opening through which they had entered was no longer there.
“Think you have a special power? A gift? Perhaps.” The escort raised one arm, and slowly, silently, the entire chamber floor began to descend. Wander glanced up, saw the ceiling move farther and farther away. “Or then again, perhaps you have only the means to destroy yourself.”
An initiation. He was being brought through a rite. But the understanding brought Wander no comfort. There was also a warning to the words. One which he did not comprehend.
“There are many paths to destruction,” the escort went on. The floor upon which they stood descended at an ever faster rate, until the great stone walls blurred by on every side. “But there is only one to safety. Only one among the many.”
Without warning the floor exited the stone passage and floated into a subterranean hall greater than any enclosed space Wander had ever seen. The walls were so far away as to be lost in shadowy haze. The floor descended across an expanse so vast, Wander’s face was touched by a mild breeze.
He looked down and saw that they were headed toward a domed structure built like a ringed fortress wall, as high as it was broad. Lights flickered and raced back and forth through the ring’s black depths. At intervals dark arms extended outward from the ring, like the multiple arms of some giant prehistoric sea-beast. They continued on and on until they were lost in the distance. Beyond rose what appeared to be several more of the rings, but because of the distance Wander could not be sure.
“You cannot hunt for the one right way,” the escort droned, “for there is no time. You must simply know.”
The floor settled inside the great black ring, upon a deck surfaced in the same yellow-gray stone as made up their subterranean cavern. From this perspective, the dark ring-wall with its endless flickering lights rose up to ten times the height of a man.
Beside their landing spot, in the center of the ring, rested two black chairs. Upon the table separating them sat two headsets.
Wander stared at the sets and asked, “How many fail?”
“Questions are for la
ter,” the escort replied. “But this one I shall answer. Of the six arrivals since I became the newest scout monitor, only one has passed into training.”
Scout monitor. Wander followed him over to the pair of seats, knowing he had no choice. He accepted the headset, sat down, adjusted the set to his temples. No matter what, he would show these people no fear.
The escort sat down across from him, studied his face, and for the first time showed a flicker of reluctant approval. But all he said was, “Can you identify your home planet from the surrounding stellar systems?”
Wander looked at him askance. This was one of the simplest of initial tests for any apprentice scout. “Of course.”
The escort leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Then prepare yourself to do just that. Remember, it is your only hope.”
****
Even before the power-up was complete, Wander knew what encircled him.
In an instant of shattering comprehension, he realized that the ring was a huge mind amplifier, larger and more powerful than anything he had ever heard of. It was powered not by a man-made source, but rather it tapped directly into the core of the planet itself. The beast his escort had spoken of was not an animal; it represented the harnessing of this tremendous force.
An instant’s perception, a moment so swift as to be immeasurable, but this was all it took for him to understand the first snare. He recognized the desire to plunge into the amp, seeking to flee its awesome strength by burrowing downward.
Never to escape.
The outer measure of time scarcely ticked away a pair of seconds, but as the amp powered up, Wander’s internal spectrum was caught in the same extension of time as when tracking an interstellar transit. He recognized the sense of time being split in two, one segment connected to his body and remaining fastened to the rigid structure of physical time. The other, however, was being expanded, further and more powerfully than he had ever experienced. Shattering in its power, yet familiar.
It was this that saved him.
Despite its awesome might, the amplifier worked along the same lines as a ship or control tower. Because of his innumerable forays to the spaceport, sitting and watching and being caught up in ships’ arrivals and departures since the time he learned to walk, Wander was able both to allow himself to be carried along with this immense power-up and at the same time to hold on to his capacity to think.
“Seek your homeworld,” the escort had said. Wander sensed the instructions were somehow the key, although he did not understand why.
The power-up continued, seconds ticking by externally while internally the vistas continued to open and broaden and extend.
And then he understood.
Before him spread out the entire Hegemony, a vast network of stars and planets interlaced by the golden paths of energy called lightways. Wander was approaching full power now, and there was no apparent limit to what he could see or where he could go.
And here, he knew instantly, lay the greatest danger.
Too easily newcomers would find themselves confronted with this power and simply expand outward with the amp’s awesome reach. Undirected, unfocused, unbounded. Stretching out farther and farther until the mind simply shattered from the strain.
Search for the homeworld.
Wander began focusing the power, sectioning space into quadrants. His knowledge of star-charting was meager, but it was enough to do a roughshod partitioning. As he worked, he became aware of another mind, watching, viewing, keeping a safe distance in case Wander allowed himself to become overwhelmed. Wander forced this awareness and this threat from his mind and concentrated on the task at hand.
Then it hit him.
Did the escort actually know where his homeworld was located? With the unchecked swiftness of a mind amped to full power, Wander decided that it was a risk worth taking. The spatial segmenting continued, but now with a different destination.
The space around Avanti was identified, the star system located, the planet approached. Wander felt the escort’s awareness move closer, check his own internal status, then retreat. Somewhere in the distance this second mind turned away for an instant, in order to begin the power-down procedure.
It was then that Wander acted.
In the instant he was not being observed, before the power-down commenced, Wander sent two messages. He could not seek out Consuela, did not even know if such a thing were possible. So he simply blanketed the planet with his messages, backed by as tightly focused a beam of power as he could muster, and bound with the unspoken words of his heart.
The retreat was swift and undeniable. Wander allowed himself to be drawn back down and into the planet’s bowels. In the juncture before his return was complete, he was confronted with a final awareness. The escort’s attention was turned back his way, and now there was intermingled a sense of astonishment. Of cautious disbelief.
Wander kept his eyes closed as the world reformed into physical focus and knew that somehow he had done more than was expected. This was not a place where he wished to draw too much attention to his abilities, not until he was more aware of the dangers. So instead of opening his eyes, he slumped to one side and moaned. The reaction was only half feigned. He still felt the weakness from his time in the hospital. The escort moved over to him, and Wander let off one further moan.
“So you’re not as special as you first seem,” the escort said, poking Wander in the chest. Wander rolled his head to the other side and gave an open-mouthed groan in reply. The escort snorted. “You may be the first to have accomplished the task on his premier journey, but still the beast made you pay.”
The escort tilted Wander’s chair back and dragged it over to the waiting platform. As they began their ascent, the escort said formally, “Welcome to your new home, scout monitor, the only home you will ever know.” As the great chamber was left behind, the escort muttered almost to himself, “May your chains not chafe you as they do me.”
Chapter Ten
Consuela found the whole thing utterly baffling.
Ever since she had rejoined the crew, Rick had crowded her. It felt as though he was watching her every step. At first she put it off as just one more confusing notion in a difficult time. But with each conversation, with every passing hour, his feelings became clearer.
If she had not so much else to worry about, she might have even found it funny.
There would have to be a reckoning, she knew that. But she also knew that in all this alien hurry and commotion, Rick was the only link to her home. And she did not want to break this link with a careless word. So for the moment she did her best to keep her distance and hold at least one other person between them whenever possible.
Right now it was Dunlevy. The pilot sat on the airship seat next to hers, blocking her from the aisle. Rick was directly behind her, kept from trying to crowd in by the chancellor and captain, who occupied the next row forward. Dunlevy leaned forward, concentrating intently on their conversation. Consuela watched the world drift by outside her window and welcomed the relative solitude.
So much was happening. For two days now the crew had scurried with frantic haste, trying to prepare for their departure. The ship was ready, the new crew members as well trained as they could be while still on the ground. Every passing moment increased the risk of their secret coming out. Of some hidden glitch slowing them down. Of Wander being . . .
No, she wouldn’t permit such thoughts. Consuela gave her head a violent shake and strived to focus upon the scene outside her window. They passed over a harsh desert landscape, not of sand but of mountains. Ochre hills fashioned by wind and heat and eons into sharp-edged peaks. There was not a single cloud, just limitless blue sky stretching from horizon to horizon, and overhead the dual suns with their eternal rainbow arcs.
Dunlevy leaned across her, squinting into the distance, frowning with concentration, shaking his head at something the chancellor was saying. Then suddenly all the crew was crowding over to her side of the vessel,
leaning close to the windows, filling the air with their exclamations. Consuela searched the distance, wondered at what the excitement was about. She spotted the mining ship and was even more confused. It was the least impressive structure she had seen since this entire experience had begun. It looked like an overlong, skinny metal ice-cream cone, with a dark glassy dome for a top. The long tail was pierced with holes. What was more, the workers had apparently not even bothered to paint the outside. It had the raw, unfinished look of junk steel. She was in the process of turning toward Dunlevy to ask him if the ship really was ready for space, when she was struck by a half-formed notion. She turned back, leaned her forehead against the window, squinted, and gasped aloud.
The size.
From their altitude, it was easy to forget that these were true mountains they crossed. The ship had been erected in an open-ended valley and stood taller than the peaks to either side.
A valley.
As they began their gradual approach, Consuela saw how the cables strung from the two opposing peaks were not thin spider webs as she first thought, but actually were bridges large enough for trucks to drive back and forth upon. Which meant that the holes opening along the vessel’s length were massive, larger than the ship they now traveled in. Which meant, which meant . . .
Consuela looked down at buildings rising from the valley floor, counted six and seven stories, measured them against one of the holes, and gasped a second time.
The ship was over two miles high.
Dunlevy glanced at her face, smiled, and said, “This is known as a gas miner, used in processing liquefied metals found in the high-density atmosphere of the gas giants. You have heard of these?”
Consuela nodded. “We have two in our own system, maybe more. Jupiter and Saturn.”
Dunlevy frowned. “Again you mention planets of which I have no record.” His face cleared as attention returned to the giant vessel they were approaching. “No matter. This is a perfect cover for our operation, for the gas mining ship must be both large enough and strong enough to withstand enormous combinations of atmospheric pressure and heat and turbulence.”
The Dream Voyagers Page 20
