The Navigator of Rhada

by Robert Cham Gilman

  “But men and Vulks have been--more than friends, symbiotes actually, for generations,” protested the Navigator.

  “Man hates what he loves and loves what he must kill. It is the nature of the creature,” Gret said. “The most terrible predator ever spawned in the galaxy--that is man.” The oddly articulated fingers drew a gentle melody from the lyre. “But magnificent, Kynan. Magnificent, truly. Man is everything the race of Vulks never became. That is why we return love for hatred, admiration for fear and contempt. There have always been men who understood this. This, and the nature of their own kind.” The eyeless face glistened in the firelight. “At certain desperate times in man’s history, such heroes must be found, or all that has been built in the last twelve thousand years will crumble away to final nothing.” He moved closer to the young priest. “This is such a time, Kynan. And you must be such a man.”

  Kynan shook his head helplessly. “I am only a priest-- a pilot of starships, Vulk. I don’t understand you.” The Navigator was filled with apprehension and self-doubt. Surely the ancient Vulk must understand that he was too young, too inexperienced, too ignorant to be involved in great events.

  “Then listen. Open your mind to me. Listen.” The lyre gave forth strange quadratic sequences of humming sound that seemed to penetrate deep into the mind. Colored sounds, sounds with dimension and texture. Kynan resisted for a moment, overwhelmed by the power of the old Vulk’s mental penetration. Jagged images appeared in his mind: Memories he knew were not his own; fragments of scenes he knew he could never have witnessed--

  --the control room of a starship populated with five cowled figures that he somehow knew were princes of the Order. The chamber was familiar, for it was the bridge of an interstellar vessel. But the instruments were not the ancient consoles he understood. They were new and strange--

  --the face of a man: cold-eyed and menacing with the assurance of the bigot, the fanatic. Imperial badges on his uniform. He stood in an audience chamber surrounded by ranks of warmen. AbasNavs. They raised their clenched fists and vowed to rid the Empire of priests. The man’s name was Tran. He was the hero of Eridanus. He said, “I speak for the Galacton! The time of the Order is gone! The Navigators must be broken!” The gathered ranks roared. It was like the noise of beasts--

  --a woman lay in childbirth in a tapestried, ornate room. The light of a single moon, cold and bright, shone through a mullioned window. A nurse held an infant, and a physician worked to bring forth a second child from the suffering woman. In the shadows, a cowled prince Navigator stood watching----a girl paced a narrow stone room. Janessa! She was much changed from the child who played at Star Field. She was desperate, weeping--and so beautiful. The legendary Ariane must have looked like that--!

  There were other images, a tumbled profusion of them, spilling from the mind of the Vulk into Kynan’s subconscious so rapidly that his forebrain could only note their strongest impressions: A starfleet leaving Earth. The Navigator’s enclave on Aurora. Armies debouching from the holy starships. His brother Karston’s face, pale and irresolute. Escape--

  There was a wrenching sensation, a cry almost of mental pain. Kynan’s eyes flew open, and he lay back against the wall, his head aching and throbbing.

  The First Minister, LaRoss, was in the room. His face was dark as a thundercloud as he addressed the Royal Vulk. “What are you doing here, Master Gret? Kynan must rest. You know that.”

  The Vulk stood, head down, trembling with exhaustion. The translucent skin was livid with the terrible mental effort he had made.

  LaRoss said sternly, “This is no time for Vulkish mysteries. The council will see you in the morning to assign you your command, Kynan. Gret--come with me.”

  Gret allowed himself to be led from the room, but as he reached the door, he turned and the thought exploded in Kynan’s mind:

  You know all you need to know. When the time comes, you will remember.

  LaRoss’s eyes narrowed, for he had caught the emotional content of the urgent command, though not it’s meaning.

  “I would return now to Rhada,” Gret said aloud, his voice thinned and weary. “I need to return.”

  Kynan heard LaRoss’s reply, and it brought a chill into his blood. “I think for now you had better remain on Gonlan, Vulk.”

  He could hear no more, for the First Minister and the Vulk had moved down the passageway. But Gret’s last thought, flung like a lance, struck him with a final urgency: “Take the girl and go--NOW.’’

  7

  The people cry, “Peace!” But there is no peace. The people cry, “Let us live!” But they die. The princes are wolves and the Empire dies and the wars devour us! This is the Dark Time. Spirits of darkness, have mercy on our souls!

  Chant from

  The Book of Warls,

  Interregnal period

  One more such victory and we are undone.

  Attributed to Glamiss of Vyka,

  founder of the Second Stellar Empire, after the Battle of Karma

  Janessa, heiress of Aurora, studied the phosphorescent waves of the Gonlan Sea crashing on the rocks far below. In the moonless dark, the wind-created swells, with a thousand empty miles behind them, shattered into glowing spindrift against the coast of the Stoneland Peninsula. Soaring night birds, unseen in the stormy sky, gave mournful cries. Their voices made the girl’s flesh prickle. It was like listening to the dead voices of cybs and demons. Sighing, she closed the window, and for a moment her own reflection looked back at her, limned against the ocean darkness. She was a slender girl, tall for her age, which was eighteen Standard Years (twelve of her home planet’s long seasons). Her hair was straight and silvery blond, held with a tiara of green stones, the deep royal color of Aurora.

  Ever since childhood she had dreamed of visiting Gonlan and the Palatinate; even the capital world of Rhada. But she had never, in her deepest nightmares, imagined that she would come to this wild and primitive planet as a prisoner. She was the daughter of the Elector of Aurora, a noblewoman of the Empire. And yet, here she was, mewed up in a stone tower like a storybook princess, but without the storybook princess’s hope of rescue. She bit her lips and refused to cry, but it was not easy.

  As in a dream, she remembered the sudden, savage violence that had shattered the decorum of her betrothal ceremonies. The well-drilled companies of warmen invading Star Field, moving swiftly and mercilessly among the guests with sword and flail.

  She wondered if her father, the Elector, was still alive. Had he managed to rally his surprised troops and drive the invaders away? And Karston--what had happened to her handsome promised husband? Something dreadful, surely, else the men of Gonlan would not have taken her hostage-- She frowned and shivered with outraged dignity. Hostage. An Auroran hostage on Gonlan! It seemed almost beyond belief. Yet here she was, with armed warmen at her door. She swept the water jug from the serving table in a sudden fury. The warmen of Aurora will come and take this Melissande apart stone by stone, she thought, raging.

  She sat suddenly on the narrow bed and rubbed her naked arms. It seemed to have grown very cold. She thought about her actual situation, and a heaviness grew in her breast. The warmen of Aurora might come. Then again, they might not. The Aurorans were the least warlike of the Rim dwellers. Good people, too. They would only be confused and discomfited by this sudden stroke of disaster. She could make no sense of it herself. To attack a betrothal ceremony was insane, meaningless.

  And now, she had heard the death songs for a star king. Did that mean that Kreon was dead? Kreon, the marvelous old warrior who called her his daughter and spoke of the time to come when she would give him grandchildren, kings to rule in Gonlan some day?

  No one had come to her to tell her the meaning of the death songs. Only Baltus, the warlock, had come to question her and see to her comfort. But he had been closemouthed, refusing to comment on her demand to be heard by Kreon, refusing even to carry her message to Alberic of Rhada, Gonlan’s overlord.

  She was a prisoner, cu
t off from the world outside. Why, the Empire could fall and she wouldn’t even know of it!

  “I’ll have their heads on a pike for this,” she told herself, holding back the tears angrily. “And their guts for garters.” That was an expression her father always used when he was angry. She thought about him, surrounded by young warmen, stripped of his power. In her imagination she saw Star Field burning, handsome Karston lying dead, herself orphaned and widowed even before marriage--

  It was too much. Janessa of Aurora threw herself on the spartan bed and wept.

  She had very nearly wept herself into exhaustion when the locks on her door rattled. She had barely time to stand defiantly before a young man in black clericals appeared.

  Kynan. It was years since she had seen the star king’s bond-son. She remembered him as a thin, rather intense young boy who talked only of commanding starships and other religious matters. Now suddenly the boy stood before her, grown into a well-favored warman, in the black of the Order of Navigators.

  She had seen no friendly face since being locked up here in this place; save only for the warlock, she had seen no one at all but her guards. Her grief and anger left her, and she allowed herself a moment of hope. Kynan, a holy Navigator and bond-kin to the star king, would surely set things right now.

  Kynan, for his part, was suddenly stricken mute by the blond beauty of his brother’s almost-betrothed. He remembered her only as an adolescent girl playing in the gardens at Star Field.

  They both spoke at once. Then the girl, better trained in the amenities, inclined her head for a formal blessing and made the sign of the Star.

  “Janessa,” Kynan said. “I’m sorry to find you here.”

  The girl’s eyes flashed with sudden anger. “No sorrier than I to be here, Nav Kynan.” Kynan frowned. He had come to her quickly, driven by powers he did not fully understand, yet powers that he trusted completely. The Royal Vulk’s instructions had been direct and compelling. He knew enough about the Vulk mind-touch to understand that the reasons implanted in his subconscious by Gret would surface with time to rest and consider. He also knew that he would not act, even on the urgings of the Vulk of Rhada, if the reasons imbedded in his personality by the alien were improper or repugnant to his spirit and personality. He felt no such reservations, only a deep and anxious urgency.

  “I must take you out of here, Janessa. To do it, I need your absolute obedience and cooperation.”

  “Out?” Janessa suppressed the hope that rose in her with skepticism. “Out past five hundred warmen--all, apparently, now my enemies?”

  “We can manage it, with luck. I am a Navigator and the king’s bond-son,” Kynan said, with a touch of youthful bravado.

  “Take me only as far as Kreon, Kynan,” Janessa pleaded. “I haven’t been allowed even to see the star king.” The Navigator’s face sobered beneath the dark round thatch of his hair. “Didn’t you hear the death songs and the war horns?”

  Janessa’s heart felt cold. “He’s dead? The old king is really dead?”

  “Murdered,” Kynan said.

  “No Auroran killed him!” the girl said with spirit.

  “I believe that. The Rhad Vulk believes it, too. But we are the only ones who do. LaRoss and Tirzah have ordered General Crespus to prepare a strike force against Aurora.” The girl stepped closer to the Navigator and protested. “Kynan, you must not let them do it!”

  “I am not certain I can prevent it, Janessa. I am a bond-son, not the true heir to Gonlan. That’s why we must leave here.”

  “And go where?”

  “With luck, to the Order’s enclave on Aurora. I have no authority to go there, but neither I nor Gret see any alternative. Somehow, the priest-killers are behind all this. We feel it.”

  Janessa walked to the window and stood for a moment regarding the Navigator. This talk of “we” meant that he was fresh from--if not full Triad--at least mind-touch with the Royal Vulk. Janessa, like many of the inhabitants of the Empire, still feared the strange Vulks. She knew that Navigators went regularly into Triad with them, and Rhadans generally did the same, though not so often. It was, in fact, this policy of Rhad-Vulk integration that had prevented Aurora, in Kier the Rebel’s time, from becoming a part of the Rhadan Palatinate. Yet, she thought, to her certain knowledge, no harm had ever come to a human from a Vulk. She must not permit her inbred Auroran prejudice to impair her trust in Kynan, who was a priest of the Order--and, incidentally, a very handsome young man. That thought brought a touch of color to her cheeks, and she tossed her head so that the long straight fall of her hair shimmered in the torchlight.

  Kynan, for his part, had been studying the girl. She looked steady enough; strong enough, too, for what could only be a hellishly difficult journey to the spaceport. She had been wearing court dress when she was abducted from Star Field. But someone, perhaps the Navigator commanding the Rhad starship that brought her to Gonlan, had seen to it that she received more serviceable clothing, for the climate of the Gonlan coast was severe. Now Janessa’s slender figure was encased in the tights, leotard, and kilt of a Rhadan cadet. Except for her hair, one might almost take her for a page or an ensign of the castle garrison. Almost--not entirely. Janessa, for all her athletic slenderness, was unmistakably female. And Navigators were not celibates.

  As if to chastise himself for his thoughts, Kynan said, “If you’ll cooperate with me, we’ll try to stop this insanity before it’s started--and bring you safely to my brother.” Whose wife she was destined to be by agreement, custom, and tradition, Kynan thought. Remember that.

  “I will obey you, of course, Nav Kynan,” she said formally, the color still in her cheeks. There was a strange rapport between them that she sensed now, very strongly. She knew with great certainty that he had been admiring her, and it both disturbed and excited her.

  “The Lyri starship that brought me to Gonlan should still be in Gonlanburg. It wasn’t to leave until tomorrow morning. I’ll go now and raid the stable for horses. If we can get away from Melissande within the hour, there should be time.”

  And then, because he suddenly realized that he had been giving orders to a noblewoman of the Empire, who was also a very attractive girl, he paused in some confusion.

  “It is for the best, Lady Janessa. You mustn’t stay here,” he said. “Will you make ready?”

  “I will do anything you say, Nav Kynan,” Janessa replied with unaccustomed humility.

  Kynan bowed and withdrew, wondering why it was that, in spite of the perilousness of the situation, he felt lighthearted.

  But once in the lower levels of Melissande, Kynan’s Janessa-induced euphoria began to fade. The guardrooms and barracks were filling with warmen--the individual soldiers gathering their kits for a protracted off-world campaign. Those who recognized him as the returned bond-son of the warleader paused in their activities to salute him, and here and there he would encounter one more religious than the rest who would make the sign of the Star in request of a benediction before battle.

  Kynan tried to estimate how long it would be before General Crespus would be able to assemble a complete strike force for an attack on Aurora. The Rhad were warlike and organized for battle, but all the Rhadan worlds were more or less primitive when compared to the Inner Planets, where Kynan had recently been serving. It would take more time to assemble an expedition here than, say, in the Lyra province, where communications were swifter.

  Thirty-six hours would be a reasonable guess, he thought. A day and a half to assemble the first elements of a strike. The bulk of the Gonlani star fleet would be off- world at this moment, but he had no doubt that the starships within the Rhadan volume of space would already have been recalled to the home planet for troop-carrier duty with the levies. The first of them would be arriving within hours. The Lyri starship that had been his, and that had brought him home, might already have been requested to clear the port of Gonlanburg to make room for the homecoming vessels. Kynan prayed that Brother Evart, to whom he had turned over c
ommand, would be as deliberate in making his plans for departure as he was in performing his other holy offices.

  As the young Navigator made his way deeper into the bowels of the sprawling castle-hunting lodge toward the stables, the images planted in his mind by the Rhadan Vulk began to surface. The facts, if facts they were, surprised him; their intellectual and emotional inferences, however, did not. Many times, after undergoing Triad both in the Theocracy and later in Lyra, Kynan had attempted to rationalize the peculiar effect of the experience.

  For several generations now, humans had been undergoing the symbiotic experience of Triad with the ancient Vulks. Much of what men knew of their own history was learned in this way, for Vulks lived extraordinarily long lives. But far more significant than the simple interflow of information among Vulk and human minds during the experience was the emotional rapport established. In the Dark Time--and even before, during the Golden Age of the First Empire--men had feared and hated the Vulk simply for being different. But with the growth of the Triad experience, sanctioned by the Order of Navigators only in the last century, a new depth and dimension had been added to human domination of the old worlds of the Empire.

  It was, for example, only since Triadism that men had begun to understand that the Empires, First and Second, were stellar rather than truly galactic--that is, that the outposts of human power were scattered throughout the known galaxy, but that they in no way dominated the immense star-cloud known as the Milky Way. The Vulk were the only intelligent life-form men had ever discovered in the galaxy. But the actual number of habitable worlds visited by either Stellar Empire was minute compared to the number existing. This concept alone was both sobering and instructive to men.