Hooded Swan, Book I: Halcyon Drift

by Brian Stableford

  “What’s all the hurry?” she wanted to know. “I thought you’d be glad to rest up for a few days.”

  “I might be,” I told her. “But not here. Uncomfortable. Got to get a job, anyhow.”

  “That won’t be easy.”

  “It’s necessary,” I said flatly. She gave me a questioning look. I told her about the Caradoc Company’s little joke.

  “You didn’t say anything about that last night.”

  “Why should I? It’s nothing to do with your brother. Hey, you drive like a spacepilot.” One hand on the wheel, the other on the gear lever. Most drivers use two hands to the wheel most of the time, but a pilot’s used to operating two sets of controls—one with each hand. She ignored the comment about her driving, and said: “We might have been able to help.”

  “I suppose Daddy would have handed over twenty thousand without a qualm,” I said sarcastically. “Just for his son’s old times” sake.”

  “We have some contacts in the starship line,” she said.

  “They wouldn’t take me on as a liner jockey,” I said. “I’m a free trader. But thanks anyway. How does the old man happen to have contacts in that direction? Play golf with the liner men?” The comments annoyed her, and she didn’t attempt to explain. She just said: “They’re not his contacts, they’re mine.” She went no further, and I assumed she had a spacer boyfriend. If I’d restrained my wit at this point and let her talk, I could have saved a great deal of misunderstanding later. But I didn’t.

  I said: “Look. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m no different from three or four hundred other drifters hanging around the port looking to pick up a ship. I’m nothing to you except that I happened to be on the spot when your brother died. That doesn’t make me the hero he thought I was. It doesn’t make me a sort of poor cousin to his family. You don’t owe me anything for his watch and his eyeshades. Not any more, anyhow—Daddy made sure I got my blood money. Enough for a passage to Seymour. I could work my way back into a paying job inside a year.”

  “But it wouldn’t be paying you,” she pointed out. “It would only be paying Caradoc.”

  And that, of course, was the big crunch.

  “OK,” I said, “so Caradoc owns my soul. Tough. Better than rotting out my days on that black mountain.”

  “Are you really the best pilot in the galaxy, Mr. Grainger?” she asked. I couldn’t tell whether or not she was trying to be funny.

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “There are a thousand as good or better. I just happen to be one of the ones they talk about. It wasn’t my flying that got us a reputation, it was the crazy places your brother conned me into flying to.”

  “Could a better pilot have avoided that crash?”

  Dangerous ground. Take great care. “Nobody could,” I said. “She was just snatched out of my hands at twenty-five thou. The dust would have run off the shield—it was only light. But the lesion, or whatever it was, never gave me a chance.”

  “You’ve dealt with dust and distortion before, I suppose,” she said, ruminatively.

  “Of course I have. Look, I didn’t kill your brother. I couldn’t have saved him. Nobody could. OK, so I’m not the best pilot there is. But I’m one hell of a lot better than what the schools turn out to nurse the liners. I didn’t spend my time learning what to do if the chain in the captain’s lavatory breaks. I spent my formative years learning about engines, and learning how to feel a ship. When the Javelin’s controls seized, I damn near had a heart attack in sympathy. Now, do you believe me?”

  “I believe you,” she said levelly. “Where can I find you if I can put a job your way?”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “You don’t want any help, do you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not that you’re too proud, either. You just don’t want anything to do with us. You want to forget us—wipe us out of your memory.”

  “I’ve done what I came to do. I don’t want to be your brother’s hero or your brother’s ghost. I gave you back his stuff. He’s dead—I have to carry on. Lapthorn’s dead. He doesn’t figure any more.”

  “Did you like my brother?”

  There was a pause, during which she settled the skyrider beside the monorail platform. I climbed out and she got out too, following me. The train wasn’t due for ten minutes. She wasn’t letting go.

  “We were very different,” I said.

  “Did you like him?” she persisted.

  “Of course I liked him. We crammed ourselves into the same little hull for fifteen years, didn’t we? Do you think we could have stood that if we couldn’t stand the sight of each other?”

  Maybe not. Fifteen years is a long time. But the first part was a lie. No, I didn’t like Lapthorn. Never did. Never could. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.

  She walked a few yards up the platform, then turned to face me. It’s odd how you can half ignore someone at a distance of two feet—contrive always to look past them or around them. But at five yards or six yards they’re in your sights. You can’t look past them. You have to recognise them. I had to look at Eve Lapthorn now—maybe for the first time.

  She wasn’t pretty by home planet standards, though she’d have looked good out on the rim. She looked a lot like her father, but not too much like her brother. She had her father’s cool efficiency of manner, his firm expression, his matter-of-fact stance. There was some of Michael Lapthorn in her, maybe, but she didn’t move like Lapthorn. She didn’t have his orientation to the world around her. She had direction and momentum, but all one way. No sideways glances, no curiosity. A set mind.

  “Where can I get in touch with you?” she asked again.

  I gave her Herault’s address.

  “I’ll be there for a while,” I said. “I’m staying with a downship maintenance man named Johnny Socoro. But if I get a job I’ll be leaving Earth without saying goodbyes.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” she said, and she meant it. Then she turned her back and walked away. The skyrider lifted gracefully and casually slid back onto the empty road. She didn’t wave goodbye.

  I caught a connecting train at Chicago. Six hours as opposed to half an hour by flight, but I wasn’t in a hurry any more, and I could afford to eke out the Lapthorn donation in a sensible fashion now it was all mine and free of any obligation.

  When I got back to Herault’s place I rang the doorbell but got no answer. Johnny, I remembered, would be working on the Abbenbruck. I had no idea what time he’d be home. I dumped the packsack in the shop and wandered off to find something to eat.

  Recon food still tasted pretty good. Earthers who can’t afford real food more than once a month claim they can taste the algae and the respun protein no matter what they do to it, but Earthers always complain about their mistreated bellies. I spent too much of my life on gruel to complain about anything with taste.

  While I was eating, a spacer who’d been drinking in the bar came over to my table and sat down. I peered at him for a moment or two, and then recognised him as a crewman from the p-shifter which had escorted me under arrest from Hallsthammer to New Rome, and then given me a lift to Earth. He hadn’t spoken to me on board the ship, but I’d seen him a couple of times in the corridors and at feeding time.

  “Caradoc played pretty dirty with you, didn’t they?” he said. This masterpiece of understatement didn’t seem to me to be a diplomatic way to open a sociable chat, but I grunted agreement.

  “It was Cyran,” he said. “He pushed it on our skipper. HQ backed him, but if you ask me there was more to it than that. Max—our skipper—might square you with HQ and talk them into giving you a job where you can work out that twenty thousand. It’d be cheaper than working it off out of another company’s wage packet. And Cyran can’t kick up any more dirt—he’s still pussyfooting around in the Drift looking for the mermaids.”

  “Don’t you think the joke’s gone stale by now?” I said. “I wouldn’t work for Caradoc after this.”

  He shrug
ged his shoulder apologetically. “Yeah, I realise it’s a hell of a thing to suggest—go work for the guy who just stabbed you in the back. But it’s the only way you’ll survive that debt. I’m only trying to help.”

  “Everybody is trying to help me,” I said. “And thank you all. But I’d need my head examined if I let Caradoc pull a trick like this. Slave labour isn’t nice. My vocation in life is not to push ramrods through the filth that accumulates in the Halcyon Drift. Or are you intending to use me in the next publicity stunt? Like the circumnavigation of the universe, or a brief trip on mega-p six? Or maybe the conquest of Earth?”

  He got the hint, drained his drink, and got up to leave.

  “If you change your mind,” he said, “The Tahini will be back on Earth in a week’s time, on the standard shuttle run”

  There was no animosity in his voice—no injured pride. He really had thought I’d been badly done to. And he really had thought that the only way out was to feed the hand that bit me.

  “Thanks,” I said to him as he left. Despite all the thanks I was handing out lately, I seemed to be letting go of very little real gratitude.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Three days later, delArco turned up on Johnny’s doorstep. He was a big man—not far off six feet, I judged, with a strongly built frame. He moved smoothly, too, and not slowly. I couldn’t imagine anyone picking a fight with him. His hair was showing streaks of grey, but he was younger than I was. Living on Earth had aged him faster.

  “Johnny’s not here,” I told him. “There’s a ship down.”

  “I’m Nick delArco, Grainger, I came to see you.”

  “I’ve never heard of you,” I said.

  “That’s right,” he agreed.

  “Did Eve Lapthorn send you?”

  “She told me where to find you. She works for me. But she didn’t send me. My backers asked me to locate you.”

  We were still standing in the doorway. With a slight movement of his body he indicated that he wanted to come in, and I moved aside. We went upstairs to the rooms above the shop. He made himself comfortable in the chair I’d been using to watch the HV set. It was still on, but he ignored it. I didn’t bother to switch it off, just seated myself in another chair and waited for him to move around to face me.

  “You seem hostile, Grainger,” he remarked. “What have I done?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you at all interested in what I have to say?”

  “Don’t know until I hear it. I could be.”

  His eyes fixed on mine and held them. “You don’t have to be grateful,” he said. “I’m not trying to help you out. I’m just trying to hire a pilot. You’re available and you have a big reputation.”

  “That’s rim talk,” I said. “They don’t reckon me around these parts.”

  “You worked for New Alexandria once. They think highly of you.”

  Which was nice of them, I suppose.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “I’ve built a ship and I’ve been commissioned to take her on her maiden voyage. I’d like you to be the pilot. It’s a rather special ship. She’s flown in atmosphere but that’s nothing. She’ll need a lot of handling to fly where she’s intended to. We need a better pilot than we can find in the inner wheel.”

  “What’s so special about the ship?” I asked.

  “It’s a composite. New Alexandria has been working for several years on a synthesis of human and Khormon technology and theory. They’ve had a number of contractors working on the various technological possibilities thrown out by the fusion. This ship is one. The New Alexandrians are hoping they can start a new scientific revolution—get things moving again. Because of the flow of people through the star-worlds, things have been stagnant for a long while. Even before the migration, real scientific advance was at a standstill. New shapes and new sizes, but no new principles. We thought we had them all. But the Khormon synthesis has added one or two new angles.

  “We’ve built a ship which can really fly, Grainger. Not like a bullet, but like a bird. She’s jointed and musculated. She has the most complete and most sensitive nerve-net any mechanical device has ever had. She can react fast and she can absorb the energy of her own reaction. This bird can manoeuvre at speeds in excess of twenty thou.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said. Nothing ought to be able to turn even the merest fraction with anything like that momentum behind it. Any ship would break in two under the strain, joints or no joints. Whichever of the various gimmicks you employ to beat the Einstein barrier—tachyonic transfer, probability shift, dimensional hopping—it all amounts to the same thing—if anything gets in your way you have to go through it. You can’t turn. Not at twenty thousand cee.

  “It is now,” said delArco calmly.

  “You’ve not actually tried it?”

  “She manoeuvres well in atmosphere.”

  “So do dragonflies. You want me to fly her the first time you try her in deep-space.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I can see why you need me. No liner jockey would touch it with a barge pole. I’m not sure that I will. Nor anyone else with any sense. It sounds like one hell of a risk to me.”

  “I’m going up with her. I built her.”

  “So you take a pride in your work,” I said. “Very commendable. Give the shipbuilder a gold star. But you didn’t design her, did you?”

  “I didn’t have to. The best brains on New Alexandria put the blueprints together. Big money from New Alexandria financed the ship. They know she’ll fly and so do I.”

  “What’s the drive?”

  “Mass-relaxation.”

  “And you have the fineness of control to hit twenty thou? That’s a remarkable achievement, if it’s true.”

  “I said she’d turn at twenty thou. She’ll fly straight at fifty. This is a real ship, Grainger, not a clockwork tin can. She’s only plated with metal—a kind of exoskeleton. She’s not solid. The rest of her is organic chain molecules—plastics of all types. The plastic and the metal are knitted by organo-metallic synapses, which are damn near perfect. Piloting this ship will be like nothing you’ve ever done before. The neuronic linkup is so good your body will become part of the body of the ship. Your mind will be the mind of the ship. You fly by feel, don’t you? Well, you’ve never really felt a ship. You can feel the ship’s skin, but it isn’t your skin. You can feel the power in the drive, but it’s outside you—down in the belly. In my ship the hull will be your skin, the drive will be inside you. The sensory hookup is that good. And in consequence her reactivity is way in advance of anything there’s ever been before. She can turn, she can move in flight. She can cope with dust, with distortion. The only thing which will bother her is wide-beam radiation. Tight-beam she can dodge. Grainger, this ship can run an obstacle course at five hundred cee. She can go through mazes at a thousand.”

  “If pigs had wings they could maybe do the same.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “No. What makes you think I could learn to fly a ship like that? It’s like nothing I’ve ever encountered before. Why am I any more use to you than the next man?”

  “Because you fly naturally. You fly with the ship. You don’t leave the dirty work to machines. You are a pilot, and the Penaflor men aren’t. They’re pram-pushers.”

  “Well,” I said, “we agree on that if on nothing else.”

  “And you’ve seen more dirty space than anyone else we can reach. You know what we have to face if this ship is going to live up to its purpose and go where no other ship can.”

  That, I suppose, was true. There’s distortion and dirt in plenty out on the rim. It isn’t all collected in the cesspits like the Halcyon Drift. I’d seen far more than my share. Blame Lapthorn and his trailblazing for that.

  “What’s your offer?” I asked delArco.

  “New Alexandria will pay off your twenty thousand tomorrow, if you sign a two-year contract to pilot this ship, under my captaincy.” />
  I got instantly suspicious. “And if I resign, the twenty thousand gets slapped right back on, in its entirety and with all strings attached?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come off it,” I said. “That’s not hiring me. That’s buying me lock, stock and barrel. How can I work with that hanging over me like the sword of bloody Damocles? That’s slave labour, without even a chance to run away. You know I can’t touch a deal like that.”

  “I know you can’t afford not to. Any other way it’ll take the rest of your life to pay off that ticket. It’s not all that bad—your rights as contracted labour are protected by the Law of New Rome. You’re not a slave, except to that twenty thousand, if you don’t try to get rid of it.”

  “I have the distinct feeling that the Law of New Rome has gone bad while I’ve been away,” I said. “Every time I hear it quoted these days it sounds bent. Your offer stinks. I wouldn’t touch it if I couldn’t get another job as long as I live.”

  “I’m sorry, Grainger,” he said, “but this comes from over my head. The New Alexandrians were very particular about who they wanted to pilot their ship and under what conditions. This is the offer, and in monetary terms it’s very generous. And it isn’t as if you were being sent into a uranium mine. Other people will ride this ship with you. Me for one, and at least two more. We’re going to be exposed to exactly the same risks as you are—and you’ll be the one the rest of us are depending on. I think it’s a good offer.”

  “Well, I think you’re a fool, if you really mean that. When I want to give somebody a two-year lease on my soul, I’ll contact the devil direct. He gives plenty much the same deal, and he thought of it first.”

  After the big man had gone—departed in something of a bad mood—I transferred myself to the seat he’d vacated and resumed staring mindlessly at the HV. I didn’t want to think too hard about the offer, in case I conned myself into taking it.