Hope and amazement and bewilderment and loving desperation reverberated through the void between them. A part of the feeling was his and a part of it Janofer's, and he felt himself joined to her by tears and wordless emotions.
Janofer! How could he call to her, speak to her?
Janofer! Was it possible, after searching for so long?
She tossed her head against space. Her eyes gazed at him with delight and wonder, through the shimmering reality of the Mu-Laan vision. How could he know that she was real? He had spoken and flown with so many Janofers, so very many of her. Janofers who were constructs of memory and fantasy, Janofers who had touched him and cared for him and tried to help him love another, Janofers who had saved him in the net. Janofers who had vanished when his fantasy-sequences had ended.
There should be a difference.
The Mu-Laan consciousness grew restless around him. But the glassfish seemed gruffly interested in the mental knot he was struggling with—and so far they were refraining from aggression. (But Cephean, the part of him still on Spillix saw, was stirring with belligerent outrage.)
Janofer, what should I do? he cried out in desperation. And he wondered why he had cried out so.
Gev—it's you!
Yes! Janofer!
How are you reaching me? Her eyes were tearful with wonder. I never expected to see you again! I've been thinking so much of you, and worrying!
Janofer! This really was her; no doubt could remain. I've been searching for you—I want you to come back and fly Lady Brillig with me! His mind was shaking with joy. And Skan! Is Skan with you?
Confusion touched him, and he knew suddenly that Janofer was not flying with Skan, But he needed to reach Skan, as well. Impulsively he sent his vision lancing out through tangerine space, focusing dizzyingly, to wherever it was that Skan right now must be.
* * *
Skan gaped in astonishment. He squinted at Carlyle with one eye, blinking furiously, while with the other he jockeyed the silvery rig of his ship toward an approaching star system. Janofer caught the image, too, and cried out in delight—and Skan forgot his flying and stared at them both. Carlyle swam in an ocean of Mu-Laan powers and prayed desperately that he would not lose the image or lose his anchor in his own reality, in the ship where his physical body lay slack in a rigger-station couch. (Cephean, are you there? he cried from his split mind.)
(Ssssssss! Ff-ff-ish-ssssss! Bvroil-damnsss-kh-khilll!)
(Cephean, don't try anything yet! Hold tight for me! Don't do anything!)
Skan! Skan! Can you hear me?
I'll be damned, whispered Skan. Am I mad?
Skan, we're real! Please listen! pleaded Carlyle. Please!
I am mad. Dark despair.
No, Skan, Janofer cried. Listen to him. He's touched me, too!
Skan blinked, and nodded. Carlyle quickly cried, Skan, will you come back to Chaening's World? Fly Lady Brillig with us! Janofer's coming.
Janofer started to protest—but she choked herself off. She peered anxiously. What about Legroeder, Gev?
Carlyle flashed a convulsive image of his meeting with the raiders. He said tearfully, I'm afraid for him. But you'll come, won't you, Janofer? Skan?
Gev, you are the one who's mad, said Skan, shaking his head unbelievingly. It will never work. If it didn't work before, why should it now? He seemed to study Janofer thoughtfully; then he said, But Gev, you've always been a little mad, haven't you? I don't know how you are doing this—but all right. I'll try.
Back to Chaening's World, Carlyle repeated.
Skan blinked in alarm. And now I have a ship to bring in. He vanished.
Me too, Gev, said Janofer. She shimmered, looking paler and more tired than Carlyle remembered her.
Janofer, wait! Can't you—?
The glassfish moaned, an eerie echoing groan of impatience or boredom or anger.
Janofer shimmered to a blur. I'll try. Good-bye. She was gone.
* * *
Carlyle stared at the memory of her. The Mu-Laan rocked him roughly in his pain, as though determined to dislodge him from its mental processes. What are you doing? Carlyle thought at the glassfish. He looked out through their tangerine vision and saw Spillix caught like a silver fly in the clear syrup surrounding the glassfish. For a moment he was content to watch, to think of the glassfish still scrutinizing him and Cephean in the net; and then he realized that his mind was dangerously split, and if he did not rejoin himself quickly he might never be able to. He gazed at the glassfish in black space/he gazed at Spillix in tangerine space.
The glassfish still had their thoughts locked musingly on the creatures in the ship's net. Leaping, Carlyle skated on that thought-link toward his ship. His own net rushed like a warm mist around him, and suddenly he was whole; and he gazed with a whole mind at those awesome, luminous glassfish hanging in the depths of space.
How little he had learned about the creatures themselves, though. Or had he learned so little? They lived their lives in the Flux—lives of millions of years of normal-space existence (he thought)—or did the comparison have meaning? They were somewhat scornful of, somewhat intrigued by, the occasional intruders who wandered their way from other realities.
Caharleel! growled Cephean ominously.
Cephean. I'm back.
H-now h-we gho!
Cephean, these creatures are powerful. I don't think we can escape—we have to communicate, to make them understand that we want to go.
H-no, Caharleel! Ff-ffish! Noss h-afraidss ff-ffish!
Carlyle reshuffled his thoughts frantically. The cynthian was angry, more angry than Carlyle had ever seen him. More angry than even the raiders had made him. Cephean, I don't know—
Sssssss!
From the stern-station flashed out an incredible series of enormous white daggers—teeth! The daggers gathered at the periphery of the net, poised to strike at the midsection of the nearest Mu-Laan glassfish.
Cephean!
Shsssssss!
Carlyle was stunned. The sight was both terrible and comic: three ethereal creatures of deep space—no, of the Flux—being threatened by an astonishing array of teeth, by the jaws of an incredible and otherwise invisible cat-creature. The teeth hovered and gleamed. And Cephean meant to strike.
Cephean!
Quiessssss!
Consternation blasted out from the glassfish and left the net shaking, reverberating. But Cephean, if disturbed by the warning, did not let it show. His teeth remained aimed, glowing, threatening.
The nearest of the glassfish backed off slightly, and the other two jockeyed for different positions. Colored luminous spots glowed along their dorsal surfaces, and their transparent bodies shined with a fuller light against the blackness of space. There were no linking thoughts between Spillix and the glassfish now, and Carlyle began to feel a chill in his portion of the net, and in the deepest nerves of his spine. Fear seeped through his body like alcohol, first to his stomach, then to his fingertips, then to his head.
Cephean was going to provoke an attack, then; he was sure of it. And if he couldn't dissuade the cynthian, he had to back him. Even if it meant death for both of them.
He strengthened the sinews of the net and watched the three glassfish.
The shockwave from the glassfish seemed to move slowly at first. It was an expanding spiral of light, blazing torchlight, and it first hit the array of teeth, exploding it to bits—and then it accelerated as it spiraled outward. It collapsed the front of Spillix's net—Carlyle's own nerves absorbed the impact—and it swept through the net seeking the center of leverage for the ship. It gathered power and carried the ship and its two riggers, helpless as a chip on a spurting stream, outward, outward on the front of the spiral. The black ocean of night was gone, and in its place a watery cathedral of sunlight, and then smudges of dust and swirls of cloud and confusing flickering light, and then fog lashing against the ship and sucked away by vacuum. Carlyle was dizzy and scared, but he held the net together tightly unti
l he felt loss of consciousness . . .
. . . which lasted, he thought, for only seconds. But when his senses cleared, Spillix was alone and drifting quickly upward through ascending layers of the Flux, spiraling on momentum. Pinpoints of light sprang up against blackness.
Cephean!
Yiss. Weakly.
They were in normal-space; and they were clear of the hazily glowing Wall of the Barrier Nebula by at least a lightyear. Somewhere deep within that Wall, in the Flux reality corresponding to the inside of that nebula, three deep-space Mu-Laan glassfish floated serenely, presumably pleased to have disposed of the latest intruders. Carlyle guessed that they were, by rigger-travel time, a good three to four days' journey from the location of the glassfish, and perhaps more, should they have wanted to return.
He did not, nor did he think Cephean would.
Cephean, it worked. You did it.
Yiss. Hoff khorss.
Carlyle made no other remark. He turned the ship for a navigational fix and began plotting for the fastest possible course back out of Golen space.
Chapter 13: A Reunion on Chaening's World
The glassfish had thrown them to a position not far from the civilized border of Golen space. Flying the most direct route Carlyle could envision, they made it back to the Andros system in just two days of rigging through the Flux.
They were weary, still shaken, and relieved to land finally on Andros II. But they rested only briefly. Both were anxious to continue the journey—Carlyle to return to Chaening's World, and Cephean to put as much distance as possible between himself and Golen space, raiders, and glassfish. As soon as a mail cargo was offered to Fetzlen III, they lifted from Andros II and continued on their journey.
Traveling in stages, they worked their way back into northern Aeregian space, stopping at each port only as long as necessary to sign on new cargo. Not quite four weeks after leaving Golen space, Spillix entered the Verjol system; and Carlyle called for a tow to Chaening's World.
Four months, shiptime, had passed from departure to their arrival back at the Jarvis spaceport. On Chaening's World, nearly a standard year had gone by.
* * *
Upon landing, Cephean pronounced that he and the riffmar greatly needed some time in the forest, and they would leave at once if Carlyle would arrange their transportation. He hated to see them leave; but on the cynthian's assurance that he would return, Carlyle made the arrangements and saw them off on a flyer. All he wanted for himself, for at least the first two days, was to rest.
But instead of doing that, he went directly to see Irwin Kloss.
He waited in the Jarvis offices for several hours before Kloss came in; meanwhile, he considered his journey just past, what he had learned and what he hoped for the future. Spillix he had placed in overhaul and indefinite layover—they had sufficient credit from their helter-skelter cargo hauls to maintain their command of her, even in layover—but what he wanted, of course, was to release the ship altogether when he resumed his career aboard Lady Brillig. However, there was no word yet from Skan or Janofer, and he held no hope at all for Legroeder's return. Still, he had come so far; he had to persist.
Kloss finally arrived at his office and invited Carlyle in. "You were trying to gather your old crew together again, weren't you, last time we spoke?" he asked genially, showing Carlyle a seat.
Carlyle nodded. "They're on their way. That is, at least Skan and Janofer—that's Skan Sen and Janofer Lief." He sat and looked uncomfortably across the dark-paneled office at the shipowner.
"Good for you," said Kloss. "Have you made plans as to who you want to fly with?"
That threw Carlyle for a moment. Could Kloss have forgotten? No, no—surely he was just being polite. "Well, we hoped that you might have Lady Brillig back by now. And that we're not too late. I was gone longer than I'd expected to be, your time."
"I certainly can use you," said Kloss. But his next words punched Carlyle, leaving a vacuum in his gut. "I can have a ship for you to fly, all right. But I can't say that it's likely to be your old ship." He paused, as though to allow Carlyle to comment; but when Carlyle kept a stunned silence, he continued, "We are going to be adding several ships to our fleet, and we'd be happy to have you with us."
Carlyle couldn't breathe. His head spun and his stomach hurt so badly he nearly doubled over. "You—you aren't getting—Lady Brillig?" he protested hoarsely. But that was what this had all been about! What could he tell Janofer and Skan? It had never even occurred to him that Kloss might not reacquire the ship! "But—you said—"
Kloss rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. "It's possible I spoke prematurely," he admitted. "I don't recall precisely what I said last time—but in any case, circumstances have changed, and nothing is definite yet."
"When . . . will you know?" Carlyle asked weakly.
"Hard to say," Kloss replied. "The best thing for you to do is to stay in touch with my assistant, Alyaca Perone. Let me call her, and I'll introduce you." He reached for the intercom.
Carlyle's head swam in a void, with no sensation remaining. There was no will in him to fight any longer. Whatever would happen, let it happen. Alyaca. Of all the times . . . of all the people to face now.
While Kloss spoke into the intercom, Carlyle squeezed his arms together across his chest. Trying to hold himself together. Eyes blurring.
The door paled, and Alyaca walked in. She stopped in surprise when she saw Carlyle; but she recovered quickly and produced a businesslike smile, with only the corners of her mouth trembling. Carlyle's chest was so tight he allowed his face no expression at all.
"Alyaca," said Kloss, "this is Rigger Carlyle."
"Yes, we've met before," she said. "How are you, Gev?" She walked over to Kloss's desk but faced Carlyle.
He was stunned to be reminded of how attractive she was, and how unlike a rigger in her poise, her control. "I'm . . . fine," he said, before losing his voice.
Kloss said to Alyaca, "Gev wants to be kept informed if we acquire those ships, and particularly if we reacquire the old Lady Brillig. Though I've told him that last is, I regret, unlikely."
"Certainly," said Alyaca. "I remember your being interested in that ship." She maintained a perfectly controlled expression.
"Fine, then. Why don't you show him your office so he'll know where to go to see you," said Kloss. "Gev, thanks for coming in. Let me know if there's anything else we can do for you."
Carlyle numbly followed Alyaca. When they were in the privacy of her office, he stood near the door and said, "Well . . . hi."
She allowed herself a flickering smile, a real one this time, and said, "Hello, Gev."
They looked at each other for a minute, and then he said, "Well—I guess I should be getting back. And I'm sure you have work to do."
"Actually, I don't," she answered. "I was just getting ready to leave the office."
They looked at each other again, for what seemed five minutes to Gev, but was probably closer to five seconds. He couldn't read her expression. There was sort of a smile at her lips, and her eyebrows were raised expectantly. A dozen feelings rushed back to him, feelings he had forgotten in only four months. He wondered if Alyaca had forgotten. "You have a new job, I guess. You didn't used to handle this kind of business," he said, gesturing uncomfortably. She nodded. "I got in touch with my friends," he said, bobbing his head. "They're coming back here, and we'll be together again. All but one of us."
Silence. Then she said, "That's good to hear."
"Well, yes. And Cephean's still with me. The cynthian. He's off in the woods again, with his riffmar. I think I told you about him before."
"Yes, I remember."
"So, well, it seems as though things might be working out at least sort of the way I'd hoped."
Alyaca finally stirred. She picked up a filled pipe from her desk, lit it carefully, and inhaled from it. She held the smoke for a moment, then exhaled. The scent was of brintleaf, a relaxant herb harvested to the south of Jarvis. "Good," she sai
d, blinking.
"Alyaca—"
"If you were going to say," she interrupted, "that we should go out for the evening, I don't think it's a good idea."
Carlyle's chest pounded with conflicting urges, and he blurted, "I think . . . right now it wouldn't be such a good idea. I need to rest . . . and we'll be seeing—"
He stopped. "Oh—" he said. He flushed and began trembling.
"Hey, Gev, I didn't mean to make you—"
His words tumbled out over hers. "Alyaca . . . the way I left . . . that time. I'm sorry. I really am. There was just no way I could help it—I tried." His eyes watered.
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