“It’s playtime,” I said. “Sit down, clasp in, and if you feel the need you can worry a bit. The gravity field will be the first thing affected by any strain, so don’t panic if down becomes sideways.”
I waited until the sounds of their clasping in subsided, and then I returned my attention to the hood.
“Ready, Rothgar?” I said.
“Sure.”
“Now listen carefully.” I spoke with exaggerated clarity into the microphone. “I’m going to take the ship out of the groove in a slow arc. Then I’m going to tighten the curve until we’re moving around the groove. If we jerk, tumble, or spin, I want you to flood the plasm with all the power you can get. Keep it moving at all costs—I don’t care how much thrust we lose, so long as the field stays intact. The moment there’s trouble I’ll take us into a tangent. Right?”
“Got that,” he replied.
“OK. I’m going to load the piledriver and hold the discharge, so the power will be there when it’s needed. We’re off.”
I paused again, mustering my courage as well as my concentration. What I was about to do would be impossible in any other ship. Maybe in this one too.
I pushed power into the piledriver and held it there, not letting it flow into the nerve-net. I scanned the instruments inside the hood, then let my eyes drift out to focus on the circle of dim starlight which was all I could see in a tunnel of darkness.
I let my tactile senses spread via the electrode contacts until I was sure that I could feel every synapse in the vessel. I couldn’t feel them as entities but I could feel the wholeness of the system.
My hands grew into great wings, my spine was the ship’s long axis, my legs were the tail stabilisers, my groin the atomic cannons, my heart the relaxation web wrapped around the drive, my lungs the ship’s lacunae.
I waited and waited until I was absolutely sure that my identity suffused the ship and vice versa.
Then, with an assurance built on little except arrogance and faith in the perfect feel of the ship, I brought the ship away from the deadline along which she was travelling.
I flew. I flexed my wings to use the strength that was in them, curled them to channel and direct that strength. I kicked slightly with my legs and my spinal muscles rippled inside me.
My heart leaped, but instantly its surge of panic was stilled and contained as my hand palmed the lever. For just an instant, the systole seemed to hesitate as the flux reached a stress-point, a moment of decision. But Rothgar was riding the drive, and the flux ran calm and safe. The relaxation field was steady and firm. The internal gravity field was still and firm.
We climbed and we circled and we fell and we zoomed in a gigantic arc. Slowly, almost languidly, I began to tighten the arc, to reduce the radius of the spiral. My body bent and my wings billowed, and I could feel in the tenure of my bones and the texture of my skin and the tonus of my muscles exactly how much she could take. I knew beyond all doubt what my ship could do, because I was her and she was me. My ship, was the Hooded Swan. Mine.
I could fly faster than light.
I could fly higher than the stars.
I could fly through clouds and through rainbows.
I choked.
A hand of cold metal clasped my throat with a grip that was not too tight, but icy cold, and froze the breath in my throat.
The Hooded Swan cried out in pain, and I heard the voice of my own scream rattling off the walls of the control room in jagged echoes, with Eve’s scream answering it in resonant anguish.
I fought for air, my panicked wings beat briefly, and we came out of the arc on a tangent. The bird soothed her ruffled feathers, and Rothgar, down in her womb with the drive, caressed his child back to life and sanity.
We were clear, and sliding back feather-light into the comforting slot that was our programmed course. I breathed deeply, still feeling the pain that had possessed my throat when the flux jammed. There were great red bruises on my neck—so Johnny told me afterwards. I felt for and with my ship. Her pain was mine, and her injuries were mine. If the Hooded Swan were ever to go down, I need not worry about spending another two lonely years on some bleak rock.
The silence lasted a long time. No one else moved until I had the hood off my head, and was rubbing my neck and my face with both hands. I wiped my face with my sleeve, and was relieved to see that what came off me was all sweat and no blood. But I think I was worried more for the bird than for myself.
“What happened?” asked delArco.
“Nothing serious. The flux in the relaxation web jammed. The plasm distorted. But it was only momentary. Rothgar flushed out the trouble with the power we held in reserve. She took it easily. She’ll take it again, if need be. You’re right, Captain. Your ship will turn at transcee. She’ll manoeuvre in deep-space. She might even take us in and out of the Halcyon core.”
“When you screamed,” said Johnny, “I thought we’d gone.”
I shook my head. “It was surprise more than hurt. I didn’t expect it to feel like that, inside me instead of around or underneath me. I knew it would, I guess, but knowing it isn’t the same as taking it. It was a false alarm. The Swan barely whimpered.”
“Is she all right?” demanded delArco.
“Perfectly,” I assured him. “The operation was a success. The patient is in good health. She’ll do what you say.”
“And in the Drift?”
“I’ll answer that in the Drift. For now, I’ll push her back to twenty thou, and then I want a rest. And some food.”
I could sense words hovering around behind me, unsaid. Captain delArco or no Captain delArco, I ruled the control room. Which was as it should be.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We made almost dead level time to Hallsthammer, once I’d worked out an ETA based on what I knew the ship could do and what I wanted to do with her. It took nearer three days than two, which annoyed delArco, but whatever was burning him up wasn’t my affair. I was in no tearing hurry. The Swan had done all that she was asked to, and looked casual while she did it, except for that one momentary indiscretion while I was pushing her a little too hard.
There was no crowd in the bay to watch us land—a fact which surprised me until I found out how many cops it took to keep them away.
“Whose is the private army?” I asked delArco.
“The port’s, of course,” he replied.
“And who’s looking after the drunks?”
“The backers requisitioned all the police support they thought we might need. They care a lot more about their ship than the New York Port Authority.”
“They’re here, then?”
“Of course they’re here. Didn’t you suppose they’d want to know how their ship flies, and to have a look at their crew?”
“Very understandable,” I said. “Why didn’t we fly her to New Alexandria before coming here?”
“Time,” he said—not for the first time—“is of the essence.”
Personally, I’d have forgiven Caradoc anything if they’d lifted the treasure of the Lost Star that very evening, and saved us the bother of killing ourselves. But delArco was determined that we should make a race of it, win by half the length of the course, and collect the prize and the glory. It’s easy to have ambition when your part in the action consists of sitting around and inquiring after other people’s health.
“Do we stay aboard and wait for them?” Eve asked.
“I’m going ashore,” Rothgar stated bluntly. “Grainger and me, we stink.” He looked sideways at delArco, who’d hardly sweated a drop all trip.
“We’ll see them at the hotel,” said delArco. “We’ll have dinner in their suite.”
“Oh Jesus!” commented Rothgar. I didn’t like the idea either. This was delArco’s job, not mine. He was the builder—the moneymaker. He maybe owed the backers a fancy suit of clothes and a nightful of pretty talking. All I owed them was a pair of hands wrapped around the controls. Rothgar too. Eve, of course, saw nothing wrong with the plan, an
d Johnny seemed ready to tackle it manfully. I foresaw a great deal of discomfort and embarrassment all round, and I said so. But the captain put his foot down, and exerted his authority. I might be the driver while we were upstairs, but he wasn’t going to let me call the tune while we were on civilised soil. He was the lawfully appointed boss.
Rothgar told him that he was several exotic varieties of a lousy bastard—maybe hoping to be confined to quarters—but delArco just ignored him.
While preparing to face the dinner, I had the temerity to doubt the intelligence of the New Alexandrians, whose idea it probably was. Later, I realised that maybe they weren’t stupid after all—just crazy. They knew we wouldn’t like it, and that’s partly why they did it. When we walked through the door of their suite, Rothgar practically broke out into a rash. I wondered how long it would take him to lose patience and start stirring his tea with his fingers—just for effect.
There were three New Alexandrians, and delArco introduced them proudly to the assembled ranks of his crew. One of them I’d seen before—a white-haired, wizened old man with eyes as bright as a bird’s. His name was Titus Charlot, and I’d known him while Lapthorn and I were working as entrepreneurs extraordinary for the Library. The other two were younger, and looked more like big money than big brains. New Alexandria has her passengers like everywhere else. They have intellectual standards which are rigidly maintained, but there’s no Law of New Rome that says a man with intelligence has to use it. And people who have money as well quite often get out of the habit. Silas Alcador and Jacob Zimmer were their names.
They all knew Eve already, and they greeted the rest of us with all the ersatz pleasure which the salubrious surroundings demanded.
Dinner was exactly as farcical as I expected. It also seemed well-nigh endless. But eventually, by sheer necessity, the party broke up and relieved us all of the hideous attempt at togetherness. DelArco closeted himself with Alcador and Zimmer to discuss practical details of the Lost Star search, and to give them a full account of our journey from Earth to Hallsthammer. Rothgar elected to get quietly drunk while pretending to pay attention to this conversation, supporting his pretence with the occasional semi-relevant snide remark. Johnny prowled around in Eve Lapthorn’s wake until she was forced to talk to him in order not to have him perpetually leaning over her shoulder. She couldn’t muster the unkindness to chase him away.
Titus Charlot picked on me.
“Vile, isn’t it?” he remarked, with unconvincing friendliness.
“It’s your party,” I reminded him.
He shook his head. “I don’t like this kind of thing any more than you do. But it’s the way men like Silas and Jacob conduct their business with men like Captain delArco. We are dragged in against our will to complete their idea of a full picture.”
“I thought you were the boss,” I said, a fraction sharply.
“Not at all,” he replied silkily. “My concern is principally that of the scholar. I led the team which processed and integrated the Human and Khormon corpora of knowledge and thought. Silas and Jacob are concerned more with the financing and material handling of one or two of the projects resulting from the synthesis. We are merely allies. I have no authority over them.”
I was nearly a foot taller than Titus Charlot, yet he seemed to be looking down on me. And talking down to me as well. It was suddenly borne in upon me that this man practically owned me, lock, stock and barrel, and that he knew it. And that he was pleased by it. It occurred to me that Charlot didn’t like me, and I couldn’t quite see why.
“It’s a long time since we last met, Grainger,” he said evenly.
“Not so long,” I said. “I’ve a few friends I haven’t seen in longer.”
“You haven’t got any friends,” he said coolly.
“Not here, apparently.”
“We remember you, on New Alexandria,” he said. “We always thought very well of the work you did for us. The value of what we eventually gleaned from what you brought us was priceless—immeasurable in terms of money, of course, though I imagine we underpaid you shamefully. When I heard that you’d been picked up I was delighted to have the opportunity of repaying you. I’m very happy to have been able to help you.” His voice was dead flat, and he was practically drooling false piety. He was putting a great deal of effort into making sure that I understood that he didn’t mean a word of it. I found the overacting more insulting than the intention. But I couldn’t fathom out what he had against me.
“Who told you I’d been picked up?” I asked suddenly, wondering if it could possibly have been Axel Cyran.
“News travels fast,” he said. “And all news goes via New Alexandria. We like to know everything.”
“I don’t suppose,” I said airily, ‘that you exercised any sort of influence on the court which handed me the ticket for twenty thousand? Just so you could offer to buy it back?”
“Of course not,” Charlot replied. “I’m surprised you should imagine that a court on New Rome could be influenced in any way. The New Romans are very jealous of their proven honesty and integrity.”
“Yeah,” I said, to show that I didn’t believe him.
“Let’s not spend too much time being expressively clever. It’s a great strain at my age. Tell me what you think of my ship.”
A lot of people seemed to think of that ship as their own personal property. In legal terms, Alcador and Zimmer must own it, and they were the only ones I hadn’t heard advancing a claim. I saw things this way: What Charlot had owned was a big computer and the pickings of other men’s minds. What Alcador and Zimmer had owned was a stack of ready cash. What delArco had owned was a metal and plastic scrapyard. The ship didn’t really come into existence until she flew. And in deep-space, she was all mine. She was me. Ergo, she was my ship.
In telling Charlot how she behaved and how she handled, I spared no effort in conveying this point of view to him. He didn’t like it.
“You can’t understand,” he sneered. “She’s all mine and only mine. History will give her to me.”
“That’s true,” I conceded. “But then, they write the history on New Alexandria, don’t they? And by the time the Hooded Swan is history, I won’t care too much.”
“This goes a lot further than your meagre existence, Grainger,” he assured me. “You’re only a very tiny part—a tiny mechanical part. The ship is mine, Grainger, and so are you. I couldn’t fly the ship myself, so I bought a machine which could. That’s you. No one else is important. Alcador, Zimmer and delArco are just the hired hands. Eve Lapthorn is nobody, and that extra crewman too. Rothgar is just a transient. He won’t last long enough to register his presence.”
“You mean you set this whole thing up so that you could claim all of the credit? Is that all?” I laughed at him. It wasn’t funny, but I thought amusement was called for.
“That’s right,” he said, with sudden intensity. “Credit. Not to claim it, but to feel it. I want what’s mine, and I don’t intend to let any of it go. But it’s not credit for a fancy spaceship that I want. Not only that. The Hooded Swan is only a very small beginning. It’s the beginning of what the Human race came out into space for. It’s the fusion of alien science with our own. It’s five hundred years of conceptual development in a single stride. It’s the result of a perspective gained from two different points of view. The universe is by no means a simple place. The real nature and potential of matter and time and force are millions of years beyond our crude brains. We need to develop, to evolve, in order to have any hope of ever understanding the universe in which we live. The Hooded Swan is only five hundred years’ worth of groping in the dark, of advancing along the chosen path of our narrow little minds. But it’s a beginning. Not just of new opportunities in star-travel, or new sensations for spacemen.
“It’s the beginning of a new kind of evolution. From now on, evolution isn’t a matter of selection by elimination of the weakest—you have no idea how crude and inefficient that is! From now on, evol
ution will come about via the fusion of the strongest. It will comprise the growing together of all the intellectual races. On New Alexandria we will integrate every race into a coherent pattern of summed knowledge, philosophy, attitude, intellect, creativity, potential. We will form a cohesive, corporate supermind. From that supermind will come the potential for a new environment—not just new technology, but new ways of thought, new ways of life. Once the supermind exists, the environment can advance to meet it. Once the environment begins to change, all of the races will adapt to fit it. Our supermind will begin in our computers, and in our few fortunate selves. But it will expand to encompass everyone. All men of all races. To any man will be available the knowledge, the philosophy, the aesthetic capacities, the emotional capacities of all men, whatever their race. And from the synergistic integration will emerge new knowledge, new understanding, new appreciation.
“Together, Human and Khormon can know and feel more than they ever could if they remained separate. All the races together will come to know the universe as it is. We will become universal beings. We will possess a universal mind.
“The fools who originally wanted the human race to come out into space thought in terms of its conquest. They were so stupidly ambitious as to imagine that the scum of one tiny planet could own the universe. Intelligent men have a different idea. We want to be the universe. We want to achieve our full potential within it—we want to achieve identity with it. And we can. The fusion of Human with Khormon hasn’t doubled our knowledge. Far more than that. It has created whole new fields of thought—directions which our poor simple brains never realised the existence of. The two become a greater one by far than the sum of its parts. And when we have added everything of all the other races into the supermind, we will have one of such tremendous potential that it is beyond our trivial imagination.
“From this moment, evolution at the intellectual level no longer divides and diversifies. It unites. We have a goal, and we can attain it.
“You, Grainger, are an ephemeral. And a mindless ephemeral at that. You can’t understand. None of this belongs to you. Only to me. This is what I have begun. This is the credit that I want.”
Hooded Swan, Book I: Halcyon Drift Page 9
