Star Rigger's Way

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  But what Cephean had wanted to know, Carlyle thought, was what they were going to do later, if and when they made their way out of this area, and assuming that Carlyle could reestablish his bearings with respect to navigable space. They had made an intuitive judgment to remain in the Flux rather than leave it, because they would probably only confuse themselves more by emerging blind somewhere inside the Barrier Nebula. Better to go with intuition and go with the Flux.

  Did Carlyle intend to continue on the uncertain trail of Janofer and Skan? He wasn't sure. But Cephean had made clear that he was sure of something: he wanted nothing more to do with pirates or raiders.

  "We'll just have to see. Legroeder didn't think Skan and Janofer were even in Golen space—but that Thangol told me that Janofer flew to Denison's Outpost." If she made it, he thought worriedly. Legroeder probably didn't make it to wherever he was going—probably captured by raiders himself and impressed into service. What chance that he's even still alive? So do I keep looking for Janofer and Skan?

  His goal of reuniting the Lady Brillig crew seemed more bitterly distant now than ever.

  "Cephean, we'll do all right—especially now that we have some experience in this messy stuff," he said. He was trying to voice more conviction than he felt; but Cephean wouldn't be fooled.

  "Fferhaffs, Caharleel," hissed Cephean. Odomilk, he directed the riffmar. He suddenly sat stiffly upright, his eyes wide and glazed. (Sorrow. Pain.) There was no odomilk; he had exhausted his supply long ago. Melon, he directed the riffmar sadly.

  * * *

  Twice more they rigged, and still there was no visible sign of progress. They decided to rest longer this time, and Carlyle, against his better judgment, downed a couple of ales and mixed a cocktail for Cephean. They both felt better, if slightly fuzzy in the head, afterwards.

  That was when the alarms went off in the bridge.

  Carlyle stumbled into a moving mass of cynthian fur on his way to his station, but after a minute of confusion they were both in their places, stretching their senses out into the net. Caharleel! exclaimed the cynthian expansively.

  Yes, I see, said Carlyle, pleased and awed. The ship was moving, and at a rather good speed. The mist ahead was spinning, breaking up. There was an accelerating current moving into the vacuum left by the parting mists. And now he saw a dark spot of coalescing matter ahead, and that was apparently the primary force drawing the current. They had gotten into the net none too soon, if they didn't want to be drawn into that vortex (perhaps a sun being born in normal-space?). Bank left, Cephean—we have to skirt this whole area, he said, trying to clear his head of ale.

  Cephean complied sluggishly, and Carlyle bent his own vanes to the task, and they swept to the left at a steadily increasing speed. They spun past the dark core at a safe distance and picked up still more speed in the process. Soon the turbulence of the abscess was behind them, and they sailed free through a luminous space with only distant landscape features for visual reference. It was a crystalline, watery space—an ocean, but a sunlit and amniotically warm ocean. It cleared Carlyle's head, and Cephean muttered grudging approval. It was somewhat like Sedora's dreampool.

  Carlyle was glad to see the change but was uncertain of what it meant. Were they clear of the Barrier Nebula, or were they simply in some inner quiet zone and due shortly to encounter new features, new difficulties? And what direction were they traveling?

  They could see for quite a distance, as through clear tropical water, except that the water was the color of pure sunshine. The features in the distance appeared to be some kind of reef, and they were growing larger as the current carried Spillix forward.

  * * *

  Caharleel, hi ffeel ssome-ssing-s. Ssome-whon-s.

  Eh?

  Reefs were passing by to the left and to the right, but none of them close enough to seem dangerous. They were peculiarly shaped, with frail supporting members intricately twined together, and upper mound-shaped structures which looked far too massive to be borne by the fragile midsections. The entire reef rested on a "seabed" which simply faded into the clear luminous sea. Spillix, guided by only gentle control from the net, drifted slowly and steadily and was now passing through the last of the reef congregation.

  Something in the reefs, Cephean?

  H-no. Noss hin reefss. H-aheads.

  Carlyle cast his gaze far forward, beyond the reefs. If Cephean thought enough of his feeling to speak up, it was almost certainly something significant. Ahead now, he saw what appeared to be incredibly huge kelp beds. Despite their distance, he could already distinguish individual fronds. Apparently they were in for a change of scale; perhaps they and their ship would be as a tiny sea creature passing through a vast seaweed labyrinth.

  Quickly enough, they crossed the empty sea between the reefs and the kelp beds, and his guess proved correct. The water became slightly hazy with plankton, and the floating fronds curved high above them and far beneath them as the ship approached, riding the continuing current. In here, Cephean? I don't sense anything yet. Do you still sense it? They glided above a curving frond and beneath another, overhanging, and on through into the interstices of a seaweed cluster.

  Yiss. Hi ffeel iss. Noss hhere.

  Where? Do you know?

  H-no.

  Riggers? Raiders?

  Ssssss. Hi don'ss h-know.

  Clucking thoughtfully, Carlyle shrugged to himself—and flew, with Cephean's help, along a convoluted passageway through the kelp. There was really nothing much he could do, except to be alert and ready for trouble.

  A strong and ethereal sun filtered through the sea from somewhere beyond his vision or knowledge. The light streamed down in fluted rays, cut and blocked and reflected by alternating fronds and open space in the regions overhead. They were gliding in silence through a cathedral of the sea. The fronds twisted and floated through the angled sun rays, gleaming here with velvety beads of silver, glowing there in golden-green sunlight, gloomy in another place with shadow. Together with the fronds, there were spidery holdfasts anchoring the plants and lilac-colored "blossoms" and round, slick "grapes." Spillix drifted on the current, and the two riggers kept her stable and straight, and watched and waited.

  They did not wait long. The current took a downward turn and slid through increasingly dense kelp. Downward they moved, downward. And the direct rays of the sun became scarcer and scarcer and finally nonexistent; they descended through a realm of gloom lined with dark but faintly glistening fronds.

  Hi ffeel iss h-more, Caharleel. Ssome-whon-s.

  Down there?

  Yiss.

  The gloom deepened, and the space grew tight for maneuvering. Carlyle was nervous; these were not ideal circumstances for meeting a stranger—but the current was too strong for turning back. Ahead was an inky cavity in the kelp, and that was where the current pulled. The ship glided into that darkness and emerged into a vast black abyss. Shadows of stars shimmered in the distance without illuminating. And—directly before them, turning to stare—were three transparent creatures which looked like luminous fish from the depths of an incredible alien sea. They were enormous, many times the size of the little starship.

  Caharleel! (Disbelief.)

  I see it, Cephean. I see it. But he wished he hadn't. These were surely the entities Cephean had sensed—but what were they? Did you create this image, Cephean?

  H-no! Bvroil-damns ffish-ss!

  I didn't think so—but I didn't, either. There was a powerful sentience emanating from those creatures; and he and Cephean were being carried directly toward them by the current. They look like—and he remembered an aquarium on Argyl, near the rigger-school—like enormous Argylan glassfish. But these fish were not in the deep abyss of any Argylan sea; they were in space, in the deep abyss of the Flux.

  Whass?

  Deep-space glassfish. That's what they are. Or what they should be. Deep abyssal fish—on an incredible scale—with transparent, glassy bodies glowing faintly as though in black light, and e
yes which changed color as they moved. Floating against the jet blackness of space, they were figures of awesome and terrible appearance. They turned and stared at the approaching rigger-ship, their eyes a dark, simmering red.

  Carlyle felt the current slowing but rocking with some turbulence as it did so. Could it be that these creatures were stopping the current? He tried to put a confident face forward, but he shivered as he met the gaze of the nearest glassfish. (Cephean, he sensed, was distrustful and uneasy, but not overtly frightened. Good. That was good. One of them was not overtly frightened.)

  A flower of light erupted from the glassfish. The flower blossomed, rose and violet and clover, swelling into the blackness in a crinkly, jerky fashion. Jets shot out of the flower past the rigger-ship. And then one exploded directly toward Spillix.

  Carlyle braced for a shockwave.

  A sheet of fire blazed in the net and charged it with spinning energy. He was dazzled and stunned, but the wave passed and left him unhurt. He felt cautiously for Cephean's presence and found him unharmed but indignant, lashing his tail back and forth in the net, and testing his claws. Carlyle blinked, and the net fell dark. He again looked across the void at their adversaries—if that was what they were.

  The glassfish let their bodies turn slightly as they floated; but their eyes, luminous and unblinking, remained focused upon Spillix. They made no other move. They hovered and watched intently.

  Chapter 12: Contact Is Made

  Spillix drifted dead in space. Carlyle expanded and contracted the net on one side and then the other in an effort to move the ship. But although she rocked and yawed in place, the ship did not move from her position. Apparently the glassfish controlled the current or were able to hold the ship directly.

  The glassfish watched.

  Carlyle waited for another shockwave, or some sign of aggression; but none followed. He wondered uneasily what the glassfish were seeing as they stared at him. A terrible sense filled him that somehow he and Cephean and Spillix were being probed, examined in detail by those powerful eyes. He felt touched . . . as though the glassfish were seeing him from the inside and making him as transparent as they were.

  Cephean, what do you feel? he whispered urgently.

  Bvroil-damns ffish! hissed the cynthian in fury.

  Yes, whispered Carlyle. But what else? Do you think they live here in the Flux? And are they . . . touching you? He felt chills flashing through his spine; the net shimmered in response.

  Sssssss, answered Cephean, his voice like static from space. Bvroil-damns ff-ffish-ss. His tail was stilled, but he glared across the void at the glassfish.

  Carlyle started to repeat his question but changed his mind; he would do better to focus his attention on the glassfish. How could he speak to them?

  Already, he felt, they were prying into and learning his thoughts with those deadly eyes. He felt light-headed, as though layers of shielding were being lifted. Perhaps he could speak to them directly. He focused his vision on the glassfish, and he thought of curiosity, and he tried to probe consciously and reach with his thoughts toward them.

  An electric charge touched him, making him tingle.

  He sensed . . . truculent curiosity from the glassfish. For no clear reason, he felt that they were not planning to physically disturb their captives . . . at least not yet.

  The charge touching him grew stronger. It electrified the cells of his memory as it paralyzed him. He felt the insulation between cells, between subconscious and conscious, sparkle with dancing bits of fire and then evaporate in a glitter.

  Caharleel! he heard.

  No! he cried.

  H-no!

  Memories, long repressed, swarmed up like electrified particles . . .

  —home on Alcest IV, and his father betraying disillusion in a son who failed to be part of his hopes, of his world—

  —shame and joy mingled, leaving home, never to return—

  —rigger school, Argyl—

  —dreampools and drugs opening his mind, hypnotic training to release visions—

  —leaping into brilliant fantasies, towers and fishes and birds and galaxies of color—

  —discovering the terrible truth of human loneliness—

  * * *

  . . . shimmering memories, swarming . . .

  * * *

  —fragments of the quarm on Syncleya, bowed cynthian heads and joining thoughts—

  —crafters moving through the forest with riffmar and roffmar—

  —smells and goodnesses of the world, odomilk and bramleaf and syrup—

  —harrowed by the closeness of others, feeling abnormal, frightened—

  —failing to meet minds with a mate, not wanting to—

  —Corneph insisting, pulling him into the suffocation of the full quarm—

  —flight—

  —disaster, and a peculiar alien, a human, a worthy creature but prone to excitability—

  * * *

  . . . remembering further . . .

  * * *

  —first love with a woman who left on a ship and never returned, and was never a friend—

  —humiliation outside the rigger community, longings unfulfilled within—

  —friendship with Janofer, and then Skan and Legroeder, and flying Lady Brillig—

  —loss—

  —a long and uncertain quest to regain a security never possessed—

  * * *

  . . . memories flickering up as though in an invisible cyclone; but he could see where they were going, flying in a great golden stream of lost secrets to the glassfish. Impulsively he stepped with a part of his mind into the eye of the cyclone and leaped with one of the memories—with Lady Brillig—and rode it in an arc across space to the glassfish.

  And he entered the glassfish's mind.

  The gestalt of all their minds. They call themselves Mu-Laan, he discovered.

  He saw the Mu-Laan inspecting this small creature which dared, with smaller creatures inside it, to enter their realm, their dream-turbulent home in the world of ever-shifting realities. It was a peculiar realm, this world of the Mu-Laan. The gestalt was of more than the three; there were other minds at work, linking and joining and crossing over incredible distances, meaningless distances to form the merged identity, the gestalt.

  Distance meant nothing; it was an artifact of a limited mind.

  He huddled, terrified of losing himself in the gestalt. But he peered out through the mind of the Mu-Laan, and he saw over fabulous distances, scenes as far away as the other galaxies, as near as the internal organs of the glassfish. He viewed through other eyes, he touched other riggers, human and otherwise; he glimpsed creatures which dwelled in the glassfish universe, in the Flux.

  Perhaps he could focus: he glimpsed the Hurricane Flume through the eyes of a rigger passing in a ship. No memory this—it was a vision different from his, a vision of another being. And here: the Wall of the Barrier Nebula, from outside, and just at the edge of the Flux. A rigger somewhere in Golen space, diving deeper. Thoughts and feelings of riggers fluttered across his senses. The touch of a pirate ship, a raider—and the paranoia and fear of the riggers who drove her. Legroeder! Had he touched Legroeder? The sense fluttered away before he could isolate it from the blur.

  But he understood now what had happened to Legroeder; he had caught that in the flurry. Legroeder had been captured and impressed by the raiders, as he had guessed. And, he felt sadly, Legroeder would never be seen free and alive again by his old friends. He was sure of the fact, though he did not know how he knew.

  The pain made his resolve waver, and for a moment he was aware of his own frailty here; he was split in two minds, and he looked out of Spillix at the glassfish even as he looked out of the Mu-Laan mind at the Flux universe.

  But if he could see so far and so clearly—

  —could he touch Janofer and Skan in the nets of their ships?

  Mind whirling, he squinted and focused.

  * * *

  Strati
fied mists. Janofer looked at him curiously across the lightyears, the meaningless lightyears which did not even exist in the Flux. She looked at him but did not see him. She flew in the net of a ship—where?—in Golen space, flying speedily back toward protected territory. His astonishment was so great that it erupted joyfully out of his breast and echoed across the distances. And at the sound of joy ringing through space, Janofer widened her eyes; and she saw him and cried out in recognition.