Eternity's End

by Jeffrey Carver

  A memory of the dream jumped into his mind: the helpless feeling of swinging in a tangle of marionette strings...

  As he was about to turn off the augments, the scene around him blinked out and he heard Palagren shout: We've lost sensory input! We're on internal nav only.

  Legroeder cursed. Cantha had thrown a simulated emergency at them, forcing him to use the implants. He was already failing. Focus, damn it, focus!

  And then he remembered, like a punch to the stomach, the dream that had followed the marionette dream. All those strings had turned to streams of water, erupting in a complex of geysers that towered into the sky...

  And the image of Com'peer's lava storm came back to him, and he remembered how he had controlled that image by treating it not as an inner switch, but as a landscape feature of the Flux. He realized now what he needed to do. He could master the welter of inputs—not with the built-in controls, maybe, but by changing it all to image and letting his subconscious take charge. Let it all be streams of water. He didn't need to conduct an orchestra; he needed to rig through his own mind.

  As though in response to his thoughts, the white water image sprang back, and a great gusher of spray went up. For a frozen instant, as the ship dashed through the water, he saw—like a mushroom cloud at the center of his mind—a thundering wave of foam that was not a part of the white water of the Flux at all. It was datastreams from the augments gathered together in a curling wave. He could see, glimmering in its interior, the silver threads of a dozen or more individual inputs. He touched the streams and they bent to his touch. With difficulty at first, then with growing skill, he reshaped them into forms that curved toward him when he wanted them, and out of his way when he didn't.

  He felt the ship coming back under his control. He quickly damped out the back-and-forth yawing, and felt the Narseil behind him slipping into a closer coordination. The three riggers and their ship shot down the Hurricane Flume and out, dropped along a dazzling white waterfall, and spun away downstream. Legroeder laughed in triumph and heard the Narseil hissing their approval, and he knew that he had finally won the lesson, and it was one he would not soon forget.

  * * *

  For the next two days, his training accelerated to a blur. Battle sims were added to the basic rigging practice, and soon Legroeder was steering the fictitious ship as frantically as he had once piloted a scout ship out of the mine-strewn fortress of Outpost DeNoble. It was something he was good at, and he'd certainly done enough battle flying in captivity, but now he was being tripped up by something altogether different.

  It was his rigger-mates, the Narseil.

  He had always known that the Narseil had some kind of weird time sense, which was one of the things that made them exceptional riggers; but he'd never encountered it firsthand. They called it, in their own translation to human speech, the tessa'chron, or extended time. A form of temporal persistence, it enabled them to see the "present" as a smear of time fore and aft, ranging from about a second, under ordinary circumstances, to several seconds under stress. Battle, even simulated battle, seemed to bring it out in them. No doubt it was useful to them to have a continuing momentary glimpse into the future; but for Legroeder it meant always feeling half a step behind. The implants helped; they couldn't give him the same time sense, but they could reinterpret some of the information that the Narseil were pouring into the net. But that meant adjusting to a whole new level of implant function.

  It was going to take practice. A lot of practice.

  In the meantime, the rigger crew racked up a score of six victories to three losses against programmed enemies, all in encounters in which they were outnumbered and outgunned by their adversaries. Mission Commander Fre'geel pronounced their progress satisfactory, and decreed additional exercises.

  * * *

  "We're ready to go," announced Cantha at breakfast a day later. "We'll be boarding this evening, and departing during the night."

  The announcement stunned Legroeder.

  "Is this a problem? Don't you feel ready?"

  "Well—not to invade a stronghold, no." Legroeder suddenly felt a desire for a few more days of commando training. He suddenly felt hazy on the actual strategic plans. He suddenly wanted to go lie down in a meadow.

  The Narseil chuckled, an almost musical sound. In the days they had spent together, Cantha seemed to have developed a pretty good understanding of Legroeder's feelings. "None of us feels quite ready, either. Don't worry, we'll keep training on the ship. But you know—beyond a certain point, our strategy is going to have to unfold on the fly. If things go according to plan, you and I won't have to fight; we'll just follow the marines in."

  "Yeah, well, that's a nice thought—"

  "And between your knowledge of the raiders, and our own skills, I'm hopeful of acquiring some good intelligence and transmitting it out before we're discovered and destroyed." Cantha's tall, amphibious eyes seemed to glimmer with an almost human humor.

  "Very funny. Could you please refrain from using the word destroyed when you talk about our chances?"

  "If you insist," said Cantha. "Look, this is our last day here. What would you say to breaking training and having some of our excellent—" he struggled for the correct word "—the closest thing to it, I guess, would be your beer. Do you like beer?"

  "I like beer."

  "Then let's celebrate, my friend."

  * * *

  It turned out that all the Narseil involved in the mission were celebrating that day. It also turned out that the average Narseil had a much higher tolerance for alcohol than Legroeder did. He was fairly woozy after just half a glass of what was definitely a fermented beverage, but seemed to him a cross between coconut milk and something called beermalt that was popular in rigger dives. Not only did it carry a kick; the Narseil served it in liter-sized flagons.

  Legroeder began nursing his drink, watching the celebration from the sideline. He still wondered what made these Narseil tick, but he had grudgingly come to enjoy the conviviality of their company. Cantha turned out to be something of a singer, and while the singing sounded to Legroeder like the moaning of a walrus, it was well appreciated by the other Narseil. Legroeder sipped his drink and chatted with Korken, the young Narseil who'd been friendly with him on the trip here, who wasn't coming along on the mission but wished he were; and with Com'peer the surgeon, who wasn't coming along, either, and didn't appear the least bit sorry.

  After the celebration had gone on for a while, Fre'geel called for silence. A Three Rings priest stood up and spoke for a few minutes in a kind of singsong that might have been a prayer, or poetry, or both; and then Com'peer rose with a Bible in her hand and offered a prayer in Legroeder's tongue. It sounded vaguely familiar to Legroeder, though he had trouble placing it. A psalm, perhaps?

  ...When I consider your heavens,

  the labor of your hands,

  the celestial bodies you have created,

  who are these beings that you are mindful of them,

  mortals that you care for them?

  The other Narseil listened in respectful silence as Com'peer read several other psalms, then concluded with a benediction. Legroeder found himself unexpectedly moved by the offering. A moment later, Fre'geel returned and delivered an address that sounded more like a eulogy than a pep talk—except that he then broke into what could only be called a song and dance, jittering across the front of the room, waving a wand that was apparently some sort of data storage device, but looked to Legroeder like a wooden cane.

  Cantha, noting Legroeder's amusement, came over and confided that when Narseil departed on a difficult mission, especially one with a high degree of risk, they liked to send themselves off with a rousing good time—to taste, if briefly, the good times that they might not live to see if things went against them. Legroeder nodded. "Not so different from us," he said.

  At the end, all the Narseil sang an anthem together, swaying to and fro as though their arms were linked (they weren't), their neck-sails f
lopping from side to side in perfect rhythm. Legroeder tipped his glass to finish his beverage, and realized that he was drunk. As the Narseil anthem came to an end, he sighed deeply, thinking that maybe it was time he offered a bit of human something to this gathering of lunatic aliens. He stood, clearing his throat self-consciously—then raised his empty glass and cried, "Hip, hip—hooray!" and when all eyes turned toward him in curiosity, he yelled it again. "HIP, HIP—HOORAY! Say it with me! Shout it!"

  The Narseil stirred in uncertainty, but Cantha and one or two others joined him... and then more, until the whole roomful of Narseil was thunderously shouting, "HIP HIP—HOORAY! HIP HIP—HOORAY!"—cheering the celebration to its conclusion.

  Legroeder returned to his quarters to rest for a few hours before boarding the ship. Lying on his mattress on the floor, he stared at the ceiling and tried not to be sick. He thought of what the Narseil had turned him into, and realized that he really did not want to go on this mission at all; and then he remembered Harriet and her grandson, and Maris, and why he had to for himself—and he closed his eyes mournfully and let all of his thoughts drain out of his mind. Eventually he drifted off to a sleep that was neither long enough nor restful.

  * * *

  As they gathered to board the ship, Legroeder stood off to one side of the crowd. His head hurt, and he didn't want to talk to anyone.

  // Your condition can be self-correcting. //

  Legroeder blinked and looked around, just to be sure the voice had come from within. It was one of the implants.

  (All right, I give. How do I correct it?)

  The answer appeared silently, and he realized that he could use the same technique he had applied to the control of the implants themselves. He closed his eyes and focused inward, and cast a golden cloud around himself, which slowly penetrated him with its ghostly glow. After a moment, he let it evaporate. When he opened his eyes, the headache was gone.

  (I'll be damned,) he said to the voice.

  He turned and saw Com'peer watching him. "What?" Legroeder asked.

  "You're learning, aren't you—and you will continue to learn," said the surgeon. "Rigger Legroeder, you will be a formidable member of this crew. And I believe you will find your implants useful for more things than you can imagine."

  "Well, they worked pretty well on my hangover," Legroeder conceded.

  Com'peer rested a long-fingered hand on his shoulder. "May God go with you, Legroeder. And who knows? Maybe even your desire for a safe return will come true." She laughed, a sound like a saw cutting wood. "I look forward to hearing your report."

  "Too bad you're not coming," Legroeder said. "You could remake everyone on the ship."

  "I almost wish I could. I almost really do," Com'peer said, none too convincingly. "But my orders keep me here."

  The boarding began then, and Legroeder got in line.

  * * *

  The ship's name was H'zzarrelik, which roughly translated meant "Javelin." But Legroeder found himself referring to it mentally in the Narseil tongue; it seemed more appropriate somehow. She looked like a luxury liner, at least on the outside—long, silver, and sleek as a shark. Her departure was silent and unheralded, marked by little more than a vibration in the deck in the middle of the night. The celebration was a fading memory now, and the official mode of operation was stealth and efficiency, even in departing from Narseil Naval Command.

  Legroeder's cabin was, to his surprise, more pleasantly appointed than the one he'd had at the naval base. The ship looked like a passenger liner on the inside, too. His cabin had smoothly curved walls, like those back at the base, in a cool off-white, with charcoal-gray trim. It was fitted with a respectable bunk and a small bath alcove. He wondered what class he was traveling in—business class, maybe?—not perfect luxury, but far better than steerage.

  Soon enough, he grew weary of being alone with his thoughts, and went out for a walk around the ship. Everything seemed to convey the illusion of this being an innocent passenger vessel. But surely it was not so innocent, if one probed beneath the surface. It wasn't long before he encountered Cantha in the corridor. "Are you unable to sleep?" asked the Narseil.

  "Who can sleep, when we're just getting underway?"

  "I think there are many of us who feel that way," said Cantha. "That's why I'm up. I'm not on duty right now, either."

  "How about showing me around, then?"

  "Happily. What would you like to see first? Shall I show you where the weapons are hidden?"

  "Well—"

  "We're not as harmless as we look, you know," Cantha said, blinking his elongated Narseil eyes. "Come on. You might as well see where everything is."

  They were near the midships exercise room and pool, so Cantha took him there first. It was an impressive facility, and already in use by several of the crew. Cantha took him past the pool to the equipment lockers. He released a catch and the backs of the lockers opened to reveal numerous rows of small arms. "Enough for half the crew right here. If you count up all the different storage locations, we have several weapons for everyone on board, including you."

  "So this isn't the only stash?" Legroeder briefly examined one of the Narseil neutrasers. A week ago, he would not have known which end to hold. Now it felt almost comfortable in his hand.

  "Hardly. I'll show you the other stores as we come to them." Cantha closed up the lockers and led him back out past the pool. "Oh—by the way, there are antipersonnel weapons sealed into the bottom of the pool. They're remotely controlled, so if you get involved in a fight in this area, beware."

  "Terrific. I'll remember that the next time I go for a late night swim."

  Cantha peered at him, as though trying to decide how to interpret the remark. "A sense of humor is a good thing to have," he said finally.

  Legroeder followed Cantha out of the room and up the corridor toward the bow of the ship. Three more times, Cantha pointed out locations of concealed antipersonnel weapons. The Narseil really did not want the pirates taking control of this ship. They stopped just aft of the bridge, at the access portal to a large, round compartment. "Flux reactor?" Legroeder asked in surprise. "This close to the bridge?"

  "Standard on our ships," Cantha said. "This is also where the external armaments are concealed."

  Legroeder peered around, but saw nothing remotely resembling weapons. "Where? Inside the power room?"

  "Almost. You won't find them without tearing the ship apart. They're embedded in the walls, inside the shielding."

  "That's handy. How do you load them?"

  "They were loaded when the ship was built. Reloading could be a problem, though." Cantha gave a whistling chuckle. "No, if they're used at all, it's one shot per tube." The Narseil raised a hand and traced the slight cylindrical bulge of ventilation ducts near the ceiling. "Those go radially out toward the skin of the ship. They really are ventilation ducts. But they have special linings, waveguides, and shunts. If we need to fire torpedoes, that's where they go out, through concealed openings in the hull. And the internal power couplings—" he pointed to smaller bulges "—carry high capacity op-fiber barrels, for the beam weapons."

  Legroeder frowned, following it with his eye. All very clever, he thought. But would it work? It wasn't as if they'd be able to keep this stuff hidden from the pirates for long. "Interesting," he said finally. "But Cantha—isn't this overkill, for a stealth mission? I mean—maybe we can blow a pirate ship out of the sky with all of this, but that's not what we want to do, is it?"

  "Indeed not," said Cantha. "If all goes well, most of this weaponry will never be used. We hope that stealth will be our greatest weapon. But pretending to be vulnerable carries obvious risks. Hence our preparations for defeating the enemy right here on our own decks, if necessary."

  "But what about these supposed contacts in the raider underground? What if they meet us, looking for a parlay?"

  Cantha looked uncomfortable. "We were hoping for a confirmation message from the underground, some indication that a non
hostile contact could be made. Unfortunately, it never came. Therefore we must assume—" Cantha spread his hands wide, in the Narseil equivalent of a shrug.

  "In other words, we really don't know what the hell we're doing."

  "That is an exaggeration," Cantha said.

  Legroeder grunted. "So, look—have you got anything to show me that isn't a hidden weapon?"

  "Indeed, I—" Cantha paused and raised a finger. "Listen."

  To what? The tessa'chron?

  An instant later there came a call on the intercom: "Rigger Legroeder, please make your presence felt on the bridge."

  Cantha seemed to straighten a little. "Yes, indeed. I will show you the way to the bridge. If I am not mistaken, they are planning to put you in the net before much longer."

  "That's more like it."

  * * *

  The Narseil bridge was large, with rigger-stations in a row, and nearby, a post for the captain, who apparently always stood while on duty. Captain Ho'Sung, the ship's master, was present along with Fre'geel, the mission commander. Ho'Sung's job was the safety of the ship and crew; Fre'geel's was the success of the mission. How the two commanders reconciled their responsibilities and authority was a mystery to Legroeder, but it didn't seem to trouble the Narseil.

  The captain nodded a greeting. "Welcome."

  Legroeder acknowledged and looked around eagerly. A glance at the viewscreens told him that the ship was still in normal-space, probably still navigating out of the region of the Narseil naval base. The stars were visible in a thin, wide band that stretched across the front of the bridge. The view of the stars was moving in a slow, continual scan up and down. For the Narseil, with their tessa'chron view, it no doubt worked just fine. It gave Legroeder a headache.