Glory's People

by Alfred Coppel

  Duncan opened his eyes. The reality within the ship was indistinct, fading. He had to concentrate his effort to keep from drifting back to the empty savannah with Mira and Pronker and young Hana. His hands on the helm console seemed to be appendages of another being, too civilized to prowl the black night of interstellar space.

  He was aware that he had recklessly fed mass into the grid within the MD coils girdling the ship. Without points of reference, it was not possible to know how fast the ship was moving--or if it was moving at all. But the outsider left a spoor of fear behind it.

  Is it truly afraid of us? Duncan wondered. All living beings could feel fear. Wasn’t it possible that the intruder had never before been threatened with extinction? In the Ross Stars we fought its aspects, Duncan thought. We saw how it killed and we were terrified. We sought escape. We never considered retaliation.

  Had Man finally become too civilized to survive in the savannahs of Deep Space?

  Hana squeezed between Mira and Pronker, so that Duncan wore a living necklace of cats. All of them were uttering deep, soft growls. Their eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated. The lights of the control console reflected in the black mirrors of those far-seeing eyes.

  What could they see? Was it the scene that became ever more real in Duncan’s mind? A world of their creation built of species memories reaching back a thousand centuries and a dozen light-years.

  Duncan was struck by a thought that left him shaken. If there was no time in the Near Away, then there could be no true space. Were the cats getting sendings from the others still aboard Glory, as near or as far as one’s perceptions allowed? But was it what he truly wanted? Didn’t the empty savannah whisper a more powerful call? To hunt, to stalk the dark enemy, to find and to kill ...

  He resisted the empathic coma. I cannot live as they do, he thought. He struggled to control his anima. Mira, he thought, I honor you, but I cannot become you. He reached blindly to touch his familiar.

  I am a man, he thought. Only a man. But was that really true?

  That was only one reality.

  There was another.

  With a rush of desire, he reached for it, embraced it, and abandoned himself once again to the hunt.

  Minamoto Kantaro, crouched beside the pilot’s chair, looked disbelievingly at the chronometers in the console. They were a blur that could not be read.

  In normal space there was always a sense of time passing.

  In the Near Away there was none.

  There was a void where the human sense of temporal awareness should be. The ship could have passed through the singularity moments ago. Or years.

  Damon Ng was receiving the empathic spillage of the sendings being exchanged among Duncan and the Folk. Damon had actually seen, heard, experienced, if only for an instant, the same incredible savannah that Duncan and the cats were experiencing. But Damon’s Talent was too small, too weak, to stabilize the visions.

  To Kantaro he whispered, “I saw something for a moment. Did you?”

  “Was it real?” Kantaro’s voice was even lower than the young syndic’s. His was a native Talent, too late to be recruited and schooled. But his vision had been powerful enough to make him, for a moment, slightly more than human.

  He had glimpsed an endless plain he did not know, a night without stars he did not understand, and he sensed the deep anger of dire beasts resolved at last to turn and fight. Four great cats. Not three ...

  Damon said, “Everything is real here.”

  The Near Away was not a place where time did not exist. It was a location where all time existed. Everything that ever was, ever had been, ever would be, was here, somewhere imbedded in the topology of the Near Away.

  The thought was terrifying.

  The fourth cat raised his head and tasted the night. The enemy--he thought of it as prey--lay just ahead. The chase had been long, very long. Yet the great cat and his companions felt no physical fatigue. On the contrary, the depth of the night and the emotion of the chase made them stronger, angrier.

  He knew the three others relied on him to lead the attack when it must be led. There would be death. That was understood. The fear that accompanied the understanding was familiar. All of life was laced with fear. It made life precious.

  The savannah was changing. There was still no light in the sky, but the cats together sensed that they were penetrating into the territory of others. Their spoor was faint, but it was there, and growing more powerful.

  The young female raised her voice to utter a challenge and was cuffed to silence by the queen. She subsided, belly to the black Earth, and crept forward flanked by the dominant tom and the young male.

  The hunting pride slowed and advanced with ever more caution. The spoor of the others who shared this region of night grew ever stronger. None of the great cats had ever tasted life quite like it.

  The dominant tom stopped, stood frozen, one forepaw lifted as he extended his senses into the space ahead. The intruder, the destroyer--a thing of enormous powers and primitive intelligence--fled, spreading a tsunami of fear as he fled down the night. The dominant tom uttered a guttural cry of fury. The others out there had visions of a kill. Driven by their own fear they intended to attack, to steal the pride prey. The dominant tom opened his throat and gave a cry of rage that reverberated across the vast spaces, shattering the silence with a challenge.

  The hunters rose out of concealment, and plunged forward in a furious charge. . . .

  31. Sendings

  Buele, relieved on watch by Anya Amaya, lay thoughtfully on air in his quarters. He was sad and depressed, a state of being that was uncommon for him. But he was mature enough by now to know that a syndic should rest when he could. He also understood that the acting Captain was using him with care, groping, as inexperienced people will, for the proper mix of discipline and concern that was the mark of a good Commander.

  The Supernumerary had been shown parts of Duncan’s standing orders, particularly those pertaining to himself and his future. He chose not to dwell on a possible career as the Master and Commander of Goldenwing Gloria Coelis. The others would do enough of that. They must have doubts, as he did himself. But Duncan’s word was still the law aboard Glory, as it had been for years.

  He squinted at Big, who crouched atop a fabric ledge where, by choice, he usually slept while in quarters. Big was growing into an enormous tomcat with an impressive head and great amber eyes. The cat was regarding the Supernumerary with an unblinking stare.

  How Dietr Krieg could say that the Folk had no true sense of interspecies hierarchy was beyond imagining. Big--and in fact all the Folk aboard Glory--tended to test the people on board constantly with an unlimited book of feline quirks and gestures. The unblinking stare was a common ploy, as were the silent meow and--a favorite of Big’s--the turning of the back as a sign of shunning or displeasure. Broni said the Folk did these things to make certain that their influence over the possessors of hands and opposed thumbs remained unchallenged. Broni was probably right. Glory's cats were achieving a social and intellectual development that made Buele wonder which was to be the dominant life-form aboard Goldenwing Gloria Coelis.

  The Folk were not revolutionaries, of course. They were conservative to the claw-tips. Sudden changes upset them almost as much as did attempts to discipline them (which they almost loftily ignored). What they expected was comfort and successes. The species, even in its unenhanced form, was dismayed by failure.

  “I do not suppose you would tell me honestly what you feel right now,” Buele said aloud in Voertrekker Afrikaans. He often spoke to Big in the Voertrekker tongue. Images were clear to Buele in the language of his birth world.

  He anchored himself with a fingertip to the softly undulating fabric wall. “Are they truly lost?” he asked.

  Big blinked his eyes deliberately. The cat had a way of constantly conducting communications drills. A slow opening and closing of the great amber eyes was a signal of thoughtful attention. Attention was not given chea
ply. The mature Folk aboard, like all obligate carnivores, were only conditionally social. Much of their inner life lay far beyond man’s ability to comprehend. But from time to time, and in times of great need, they deigned to share their concerns.

  Big was a tom who preferred to respond to challenges with direct actions. Fight or flee. Big understood such choices excellently well--as did Buele.

  Big responded instinctively. Buele had learned his responses as an abandoned child in the alleys of the sad kraals of the Grassersee on Voerster. Boy and cat shared oddly similar psychological gestalts.

  The terrible events of the last day and a half had plainly depressed Big. His ropy tail lashed irritably. Big did not take defeats gracefully. Even the thought of a visit to the food replicators did not improve Big’s outlook. Big liked to eat. But he was not hungry now. The tail thumped the fabric wall like a drum.

  Big had recently become fond of Pronker, allowing him to trail along on Big’s personal explorations of the kilometers of plenum and empty hold in Glory.

  Cats always mourned their dead; they were capable of deep feelings. But sensitivity to the feelings of other species had never been a human strength. Life aboard Glory was different, though, more so with each passing day. Glory's cats brought to bear on Glory's syndics an arsenal of sensitivities. But all aboard understood that the Folk were pragmatic. Though they grieved deeply, they would not grieve long.

  Big, however, was a special case. He had been the largest kitten of Mira’s original litter, and he was unquestionably a leader of the Folk. When Buele first had realized that Big was a chosen one among the Folk, he wondered if the large tom was ready for such a station in life. Big could be, in many ways, something of a clown. He was, in fact, rather like Buele himself.

  Buele knew what his partner was feeling. Big was wounded by his losses, and he was angry with a fate that dealt such blows to those who deserved better. The cats had an innate sense of the fitness of things. Buele, having come from a low station in life on a rigidly hierarchically structured planet, understood the cats well.

  He regarded his companion with deep affection and empathy.

  You are luckier than I, he thought. Perhaps because your lives are short, you will not be burdened with long sorrows.

  “Mira, “ Big sent back. He was in no mood for an interspecies philosophical discussion. “Where is Mira?” he demanded.

  Buele felt hot tears in his eyes. What could he say to his bereaved friend and companion? He wanted to say, “Find her, Big, if you can.”

  Exercising the electromechanical skills he had developed as observatory assistant to the Astronomer Select of Voerster, Buele had filled his compartment with racks of electronic devices. He had constructed a bank of sensitive holographic connections to the starship’s exterior imagers, and it was his habit to keep the holos working and recording for hours at a time. What transpired Outside the ship was a source of never-ending interest and delight to Buele. In less stressful times, Big, too, seemed to enjoy studying the recordings Buele’s scavenged devices accumulated and stored. He wondered if Big simply enjoyed the displays--or did he know what it was he was seeing? Buele, like Duncan, had already learned that the Folk had the ability to create inner images more suited to their nature than did the human beings of Goldenwing Gloria Coelis. Buele had no difficulty accepting this seeming anomaly. Even at Starhome he used to drive Osbertus Voerster to distraction by repeatedly asking the old astronomer to describe precisely what he saw at any given time, and then asking him if there was any way in which true perceptions could be shared. How else could one person ever know another? Buele wondered. His favorite question was a demand to know if what Osbertus saw as, say, “green,” was also what he, Buele, saw as green. Or was it something else entirely, forever hidden within each person, unreachable--even unsuspected?

  Buele had never received a satisfactory answer from Osbertus, or from any man. But within the environment of a brotherhood of empaths he had become hopeful that one time, somehow, he would see a thing exactly as Big saw it--and then he would know.

  Buele stared thoughtfully at the holographs his breadboarded instruments were producing. Glory was rounding Moon Hideyoshi, in the slingshot maneuver that would put the Goldenwing on a return course to Planet Yamato. The holo showed the airless, inhospitable surface of the moon where one could make out the gantries and construction cradles, the hangars and worker billets of the Kaian enterprise on the smallest of Yamato’s three natural satellites. There was no activity discernable on the surface. The Shogun’s arrival at Kai Island, Yamato, where the spaceport was located, had been followed with an announcement on the Planetary News Net by Minamoto no Kami. A national period of funerary ceremonies for Lord Minamoto Kantaro was declared, and all spacecraft in the jurisdiction of the planetary government were grounded until the mourning period was completed. Business was at a standstill, and white death-flags flew all over Planet Yamato, and some even hung in the airless dark of Moon Hideyoshi.

  Buele addressed himself to Big: “No one is very hopeful. The bad news has hit the Yamatans very hard, I think. “

  The reply was a formless longing for Mira, the matriarch. Buele could feel Big’s comforting memory of being groomed as a kitten by Mira. The warm, wet rasp of her tongue brought deep feelings of security and relief. Followed by the realization that Mira was no longer available to form the beating heart of the Folk.

  There were often times when Big would have chosen not to enter into exchanges like these. Buele realized that like most of the Folk, Big had a tendency to be single-minded. Big might easily think Buele’s commiseration frivolous and ignore it. Big considered life as an enhanced cat aboard Goldenwing Gloria Coelis a serious business.

  But he offered a reply. He did not deign to frame it in human words, which he thought a clumsy instrument for self-expression. Instead he allowed Buele to feel a small part of his grief for his prowling mate and even for little Hana, of whom he had only recently become aware. And referring to Mira, the mother and matriarch, he sent plainly that Glory's Folk did not think things had gone well. Not at all. He unsheathed his foreclaws and bared his long canines to show Buele in feline body language how he thought the dark enemy should have been dealt with. “We will have to hunt again, “ he sent distinctly.

  Buele did not want Big disappointed. “We shall have to see about that, “ he sent.

  “Mira,” Big sent back, still grief-stricken and angry. “Mira! I want Mira!”

  In the emptiness of the carapace deck, lighted by the coppery sunlight reflected from the harsh, pocked globe of Moon Hideyoshi, Broni Ehrengraf gyrated through a melancholy dance with Clavius.

  The black tom had a remarkable skill in low-gravity movements. Broni often had the impression that Clavius heard some inner, private music when he moved. She could almost hear the sweet countermelodies she loved so when they were played on the balichord by the tom’s namesake, the beached Starman Black Clavius, and sometimes it seemed to the girl that Clavius was an odd reincarnation of the wanderer she had loved so on Voerster.

  It was quite absurd, her Voertrekker aristocracy declared. Reincarnation was an ancient fraud from Earth, and the notion that a man could be reborn as a cat smacked of Buddhist mysticism. Planet Voerster had its mysteries, particularly among the Kaffirs, but the idea of man into cat was too absurd to take seriously.

  Yet as Broni watched her feline partner move through the slow and graceful evolutions of his inner-driven dance, she felt hot tears in her eyes. Poor Clavius was grieving, as were all the cats aboard. This was a thing said to be impossible by the legions of veterinary medics and zoologists whose wisdom was contained in the vast data bank of Glory's computer. Cats felt loss and bereavement, the authorities said, but not for long. Opinions varied, but a consensus suggested that a week of mourning was all that Felis catus was likely to experience.

  “So much for what they know, “ she thought, addressing the sending directly to the ship. In the last few days, since Duncan and Dam
on disappeared into the Near Away, her own emotional bruising appeared to have increased her empathic sensibility. From time to time she was finding it possible to address Glory directly, without needing to seat a drogue in her skull socket.

  Clavius uttered a plaintive, singing cry and returned to settle against her naked breasts. Like Anya Amaya, Broni had begun to discard her clothing much of the time. She derived a sensual comfort from the tingling touch of tachyons penetrating her bare, golden skin.

  Broni rolled onto her back so that she could look at the play of light on the rig, the flash of sun off the hectares of shining skylar. Beyond the mist of stays and halyards Broni could see the grayish, sterile surface of Moon Hideyoshi. At this distance the works of the Yamatans were invisible. Black Clavius used to quote the Earth Ecumenical Bible. One of his favorite lines was from the book of Hebrews: “What is man that thou art mindful of him?”

  What, indeed? Broni wondered. Her youthful spirit had been badly wounded in the last few days. Black Clavius had often warned that man was only one of many vulnerable creatures inhabiting the Increate’s vast universe. And yet, Broni thought, and yet God offers to let us touch small miracles now and again. She cupped Clavius’s round head in her hand. “Glory goes on, Clavius, “ she sent, “even if Duncan and Damon and Mira and Hana, and Pronker die.”

  Clavius twisted to look directly into her eyes. “They are gone, not dead.”

  Broni’s artificial heart beat on methodically, but her breath caught in her throat. Gone but not dead? What could that possibly mean? She had seen their ship swallowed up by the singularity that should not have been in the Gateway.

  “Clavius, “ she sent severely. “Clavius. Listen to me. “

  The cat turned his back on her and departed. She had used the wrong approach. The Folk hated to be probed and queried. The things they knew they assumed everyone knew. There was no need to experience again and again things that were unpleasant. Clavius felt gloomy, sad. Like Big, in another part of the ship, he longed for Mira to come back and make life aboard the great-queen-who-is-not-alive right again.