The Navigator of Rhada

by Robert Cham Gilman

  “They remind me of us,” Kynan said. “Quarreling and nipping, always trying to draw blood and never quite knowing why.”

  Janessa looked at the Navigator’s thoughtful face and said, “Of you and me, Kynan? Or Aurora and Gonlan?”

  “All of us,” the Navigator said. “The Rim worlds and the Inner Planets. The army and the Empire and the Order--all. Will there never be peace among us?”

  “There has been peace for a century or more,” Janessa protested.

  “Of a sort,” Kynan said.

  “There hasn’t been a major war between nations of the Empire since Mariana’s rebellion in the time of the first Torquas.”

  Kynan regarded the girl bleakly. “I wouldn’t call what happened on Aurora peace. It’s hard to think of what is going to happen because of it as anything but war.”

  Janessa looked at Kynan confidently. “But you are going to prevent that, Nav Kynan.”

  Kynan burst into laughter at the girl’s bland assurance that he, one man, a minor priest of the Order, could personally hold back the forces that were threatening the peace of the Rim. He put his hands gently on her shoulders and held her. “I shall try, my princess. I shall try very hard,” he said.

  He would have taken her in his arms and kissed her then, but something began to happen inside his head. He closed his eyes in pain as conflicting images and impulses seemed to lock in combat for control of his will. A shudder swept through him.

  “Kynan, what’s wrong?”

  Even the animals sensed his sudden ordeal. They whickered nervously and stamped their pads on the deck.

  Behind Kynan’s closed eyes, a vast and confused panorama was forming. The Vulk impressions battled with something else, a great, gathering darkness shot through with sudden, unexpected illuminations. Stars and planets whirled in swift, silent motion through an immense void. He seemed to be moving away from the light at terrifying speed. It seemed that time and distance were shrinking, shrinking, until his mind spun in space, deep in the intergalactic night. Around him he could see the luminous spirals of galaxies, like whirlpools of light. And they were moving, spinning perceptively, so that the spiral arms pulsed with the life and death of billions upon billions of stars. It was as though the whole of time were being compressed into an instant, so that the scale of the universe was being reduced to a fraction of a man’s lifetime.

  Then he was plunging back toward the light spiral that he knew, somehow, contained that place he called “home.” He was falling into a cauldron of light, and the luminosity filled all space, all time. The spinning slowed, and gradually his mind conceived of time again as men had always known it, a flow toward entropy so vast, so deliberate, that a human lifetime was only the quintillionth part of a microsecond in that eternity.

  He was humbled, moved beyond his power to comprehend, and he thought of the words “Stellar Empire” in their true context, describing a tiny fragment of the subjective human existence against a backdrop of the vast objective reality of the galaxy.

  The Royal Vulk of Rhada seemed to be saying to him: If you would rule, you should know what it is that you rule --what an insignificant part of All men have conquered.

  Kynan was only passively aware that he was crumpled, huddled on the deck, holding his bursting head, hearing Janessa’s frightened demands to know what it was that had taken him so suddenly. He thought he sensed Baltus the warlock coming, and Brother Evart, too. They were all frightened for him, he knew that. But the images continued in a roaring torrent through his brain. There were those the Vulk must have given him--but there were others, too, coming from he knew not where . . .

  The Vulk’s implanted memory seemed to say: I think I see who you are--may God pity you.

  From, somewhere else came the command: Do not go to Aurora. Go to Earth, to Earth. Your destiny lies at Nyor.

  He resisted violently. The sanctuary in Aurora was where his own mind told him he must seek help and guidance. Who could tell whence came these other thoughts? He had never before believed in cybs and demons, but were these strange temptations not very like the temptations put before other religious, in other times, by Antistar, by Evil, by the Devil?

  He had an overpowering image of himself seated on a throne that resembled nothing less than the planet Earth, and through his hands--like gems flashing fire--ran the sparkling suns of the Empire. It was purest fantasy. His mind staggered, limped, under the impact of these dreams, and he thought: I am going mad. Something is destroying me. He mumbled a prayer to the beatified Emeric: Intercede for me, kinsman. Intercede for me before the Star throne of God!

  Again came the bombardment, the thrust of greed, an avarice so great it was like gall: To Nyor, to Nyor, Kynan! Now, do it now!”

  No, he thought desperately. I will not do it! I am a priest of the holy Order Militant. I will do my duty or die in the attempt. Pray for me, beatified Emeric! His uncontrolled hands tried to form the sign of the Star, and then his bedeviled, abused consciousness refused to accept more, and with Janessa and Baltus staring at him in frightened wonder, Kynan slumped to the deck in exhausted, unnatural sleep.

  12

  Though denied by ecclesiastical historians (such as the redoubtable chronicler of the middle Second Stellar Empire period, Bishop Julianus Mullerium), it is an irrefutable fact that by the final years of the Torquan Age, the Order of Navigators had far exceeded its original raison d’être: the guardianship of the First Empire’s interstellar vessels. Navigator-astrophysicists studied stellar mechanics, Navigator-surgeons practiced in all but the most primitive nations, Navigator-engineers probed the mysteries of interstellar engine design and ship construction, and Navigator-physicists gingerly examined the atom in sanctuaries scattered about the inhabited galaxy. Nor were the arcane disciplines ignored by the priestly researchers. Psychiatry, psychometry, psionic factors, and psycho-control of personality were all considered by Navigators. Areas of investigation denied as “heretical” or “sinful” to the commonality were at the same moment in time probed by carefully selected members of the Order in secret. No apologist for the Order has ever been able to justify to modern historians this basic hypocrisy . . .

  Varus Milenis, The New Renaissance,

  ate Second Stellar Empire period

  If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain.

  Dawn Age proverb

  The starship of the Five hung in space just out of detector range of the Lyri vessel commandeered by Kynan for the flight to Aurora. The heads of the Order’s intelligence apparatus were locked in argument and disputation. The discussion, tense to begin with, had been precipitated into near vituperation by the Tactician’s flat assertion that both the Psychologist and the Technician had failed miserably in their assigned tasks. Tasks, the soldierly Tactician declared with great heat, that were essential to the completion of the Order’s most secret and cherished plan.

  The Logician, more anonymous than the others in his heavy black cowl, said placatingly, “Recriminations aren’t likely to be useful at this point.” He addressed himself to the Technician in tones of irritating rationality. “You are quite certain there has been no malfunction in the equipment?”

  “I’m trying to explain it to you, if I may be permitted,” the Technician said testily. A lifetime spent with electronic and psionic circuits left him with little patience for human refusal to accept obvious facts. “Our contact with him has been failing ever since that cursed Vulk mind-touched him. I had no idea a single Vulk could have such an effect. It has always required two plus a human for a complete Triad. And even then, I have never gotten a response like this one.”

  “A lack of response, wouldn’t you say?” The Tactician said.

  The Technician shrugged. “The equipment is functioning perfectly. The cortical implants are agitating the receptors with a full-signal strength. But the Vulk introduced a confusion factor. I don’t know how else to put it. The failure is psychological. I’m sure of it. He should have been co
nditioned to resist the mind-touch--”

  The Psychologist objected. “That would have been impossible and you know it. Furthermore, there was no reason to attempt any such resistance. Priests of his rank undergo Triad at least twice a year. What would the result have been? He would have been cloistered--or deep probed by the Vulks of the College of Religious, and the whole plan surfaced.”

  “I always felt the plan was sacrilegious,” the Theologian said heavily. “It is the hand of the Star.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” the Logician said thoughtfully. “Simply an unpredictable factor. No one could have guessed Gret’s power--and no one could have guessed that the boy would even meet the Rhadan Vulk. It was Kreon, after all, who was supposed to supply the surface stimuli to get him to Nyor. The point is, what now?”

  A heavy silence fell on the five Navigators. The images still flickered on their consoles. A miniature Janessa and a tiny Baltus carried a manikin Kynan through what seemed to be the passages of a starship. But the holographs were distorted, indistinct.

  “Can you apply more power?” the Tactician asked gruffly.

  “I’m very nearly off scale now,” replied the Technician. “I couldn’t have penetrated his consciousness at all if it hadn’t been for the resonance of the locator planted in the girl.”

  The Psychologist said, “He couldn’t take a deeper penetration in any case. You saw what the conflict did to him. The Vulk’s implants sent him quite literally out of the universe, and all we did was drive him half mad.” He retracted his cowl, baring a narrow, pale face and deeply set dark eyes that glinted in the greenish glow of the holographs. “He wants to go to Nyor. He doesn’t know why, and that’s the problem. What’s happening there? Is there anything on the receiver?”

  “Transmission at this distance is spotty,” the Technician said. “But our transsender has picked up the ionization trails of five starships going into trans-stellar flight. It is almost certainly General Veg Tran’s expedition to Aurora. The Gonlani strike force is embarking now, and they could reach Aurora within twenty hours or less. The time is now. There is no doubt of it. To reach Torquas with Tran away is exactly what we hoped for. A perfect check.”

  “Except that we can’t move our most important piece,” the Logician said dryly. “The Vulk seems to have forestalled us.”

  “The damned Vulks,” the military Tactician said angrily. “Wherever you look--wherever you turn over a rock --there they are.”

  “Ah,” the Psychologist murmured. “Straight from the Protocols, that. Fascinating xenophobic syndrome.”

  The Tactician glared at his colleague but did not reply. The Technician returned to a close scrutiny of his instruments. “The warlock and the girl have put him to bed in one of the passenger cells.”

  “Those ancient Lyri loved luxury, that’s certain,” the Psychologist said, studying the visible appointments of the Lyri starship’s interior.

  “Interesting, but hardly useful or pertinent,” the Tactician said.

  “I disagree,” the Psychologist said. “If they will leave him alone, in those surroundings--it is just possible I may be able to trigger the action response our electronic friend here has been unable to elicit.”

  The Tactician folded his arms across his massive chest to prevent the trembling of his hands. He did not want the others to see how agitated he had become. “Time is vital. Can you do it quickly?”

  The Psychologist shrugged. “Quickly as may be. He must sleep first. Fortunately, we’ve put him through such a hell in the last few moments that he must be exhausted.”

  “In twenty hours LaRoss, Tirzah, and Crespus will have their troops on Aurora,” the Tactician said. “Tirzah and Crespus are idiots. They’re simply puffed up with Rim- world arrogance and want revenge. But LaRoss is no fool. I’d almost wager my life on his being Alain Yeg Tran’s man.”

  “Impossible,” murmured the Theologian.

  “Not impossible, Preacher. Not impossible at all. Those priest-killers who attacked the boy on the way to Melissande were LaRoss’s bullies. You may be sure of it.”

  “I agree,” said the Logician.

  “Karston, the heir to Gonlan, is another fool. And an arrogant one, to boot. If he ruled in Gonlan, LaRoss would surely have the power,” the military man continued.

  “And Alberic of Rhada is old. Who is to say LaRoss isn’t thinking of a coup that could take over the whole of the Rhadan Palatinate? Please note that he has not yet let the Vulk leave the planet.”

  The Logician nodded approval. “A reasoned exposition of the situation. Better than one might normally expect from a soldier.”

  The Tactician glared at him from beneath his cowl.

  The Technician interrupted. “Even assuming that we can move the boy to Nyor, Gonlani troops will be near the sanctuary within hours after they make their planetfall. We can expect the Aurorans to delay them for perhaps a day--”

  The Theologian spoke. “But won’t the Gonlani attack Star Field first? Why should they desecrate a sanctuary?” The Logician shook his head. “Sorry, but that is exactly what they will do if LaRoss leads them--and he will, of course. I think we have all agreed now that LaRoss is acting for Veg Tran and the AbasNavs. There’s not much doubt that it was Tran’s men who attacked the celebration at Star Field in the first place. Tran wants to intervene in a Rim-world squabble--but it must be at the sanctuary.”

  “His Navigators will never permit it,” the Theologian declared.

  “His Navigators will do what Navigators have always done, old one,” the Tactician said brusquely. “They’ll pilot his ships and land his men where he wants them landed. Their crisis of conscience won’t come until after they’ve done that. And then it will be too late. You’d do well to remember that we are not a nation, Father, but an Order. The Theocracy serves all the states of the Empire--”

  “The Order serves God and the holy Star,” the Preacher said with emotion.

  The Tactician grunted. “Perhaps I’ve grown too worldly for a priest. But someone once said that God is always on the side of the strongest battalions. Veg Tran will raid the sanctuary because somehow he has discovered that we have been doing nuclear research there--”

  The Theologian’s eyes brimmed with tears. “It is the will of God, then. I have never believed that the Order should tamper with such sinfulness--”

  “Amen to you,” the Logician murmured, “but it is rather late to think of that. Tran imagines he can obtain energy weapons from the Auroran sanctuary--and it is just possible that he actually can.” He turned an inquisitive eye toward the Technician, who looked away and busied himself with adjustments of his machines. “Well, no matter. Only the Galacton can stop him if he tries to arm himself with nuclear bombs. And we all know what our poet- king is. That is why Kynan must reach Nyor without delay.” He looked around him at his companions. “Are we agreed on that?”

  The cowled priests nodded.

  “Then do what you must,” he said to the Psychologist. He stood and moved away from the glowing consoles. “For myself, I have been at these machines too long. I must rest.”

  The Theologian, too, stood. He moved with difficulty, as though age and weariness had invaded his fragile body. “We would do well to leave our colleague here--” He inclined his head toward the Psychologist. “While we pray for his success and for the safety of our Order. Will you all come to the chapel with me?”

  The Technician and the Tactician rose to their feet uncertainly. But their manner became more assured as the Theologian made the sign of the Star over them. One by one they glided from the room after him, for though they were indeed worldly men (their duties demanded it), they were also priests, convinced that en fin it was God’s work they were about.

  The Psychologist watched them go and then turned to the instruments, reaching across the fluid hyperspatial void toward the Lyran starship, where lay Kynan of Gonlan, Navigator, and in this age (the Psychologist assured himself) the most important person in the galaxy.
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  13

  In the dimness of the Dawn Age, that mystical time before man left the surface of his home planet, we may still see darkly the specter of conflicts that arose between Church and State. Empires beyond counting have fallen because the community of religious and the power structure of the nations failed to understand that they should make common cause against the powers of the hostile and unfeeling universe.

  Emeric of Rhada, Grand Master of Navigators,

  early Second Empire period

  The priests of the Order rode at my side and brought the blessing of God and the Star to Vykan arms. Thus did I conquer.

  Glamiss of Vyka,

  First Galacton of the Second Stellar Empire

  Has this happened before? Must this happen again?

  Final recorded words of Rigell XXVIII, last Galacton of the First Stellar Empire,

  at the sack of Nyor (circa 4,000 GE)

  Torquas the Poet stood on the deck of the Imperial barge and looked across the smooth water of the East River toward the towers and spires of his capital. In the morning sunlight the roofs of Nyor, golden, silvered, some patterned with gardens and white columns, all gleamed like the scattered contents of some fairy treasury. From this distance, and framed by green water and a cornflower blue sky, Nyor was beautiful. She fit her description of Mistress of the Skies.

  Behind him, a group of black-skinned Altairi flautists were playing a softly dissonant melody; over the sound of the music he could hear the chatter and laughter of the gilded young nobles of the court. Sebastian, the slender adolescent cyborg from the Polarian Confederacy, was dancing on the teakwood deck. Torquas could hear the sibilant rustle of his golden mail and the pinging tone of the finger cymbals tapping out the love rhythms of the strange planets that had given him birth. Florian, the heiress of Bellatrix, was laughing and telling a languid group of courtiers of some adventure among the Rim worlders. Torquas caught a single phrase: “--beautiful men, but too fierce, too angry. They weary one so--”