by Blaze Ward
Henri continued to play as Isaac grabbed a handful of bright red carrot slices and sat at the table, alternatively watching Henri and Katayoun.
“You done good today,” Isaac said in the space between songs, eying Henri wearily.
Henri blinked. That was already more words in one breath than he had heard from Isaac. Mostly, it had been one word commands, barked sharply while moving multi–ton pallets. Woe to the slacker or the inattentive.
Rather than speak, Henri nodded and started another song.
Ξ
“So,” Katayoun asked, “ready to see what Jumpspace looks like?”
Henri came back from that place where he went when he was listening to music, even just in his head. His hands were still in the sink, washing the last plate from dinner, just about to stack it to dry next to the rest.
This seemed like a good system. Whoever did the cooking, one of the others was responsible for the cleaning. When he cooked, someone else would handle the rest.
Henri put everything to rights on the drying rack and moved the towel from his shoulder to a nearby hook. “Lead on,” he said.
The bridge of Marrakesh was a tiny affair. Captain Dunrathy had wedged every cubic meter of volume he could into the transport space and cargo hold. The bridge was a bump on the nose of the great gray beast, just wide enough for two workstations, a pilot and an astrogator, facing the forward windows, and two more workstations behind them, facing the sidewalls.
Dunrathy rarely had a full crew, so the rear two stations, nominally Sensors and Communications on one of Jean–Michel’s hulls, were almost never used. The Captain moved back to the starboard one now and directed Henri to his own Pilot’s seat, while Katayoun took the station on the left.
From the outside, the windows would look like a pair of eyes, low, wide, transparent panels with a huge sensor display board dominating the column between them.
From the inside of Marrakesh, space was black. Bayonne’s star was almost directly behind them. The only moon somewhere out of sight. Nothing but black space, punctuated by distant stars.
“So, Katayoun,” Dunrathy said, “what do you think?”
Henri watched her do something esoteric on her panel, turning dials and pushing various buttons that completely eluded him. On the big screen in front of him, a series of gold dots appeared, connecting the white star that was Marrakesh with a golden star on the far right. Henri looked close and read the name Pohang.
There it was. The planet Pohang. First step on the real Story Road, the great trade route that connected this section of the galaxy together.
It was finally real. He had made it to space. Henri had ever believed he would get this far.
“Six jumps, girl?” Dunrathy continued. “Are you just showing off now for our passenger?”
Henri watched the woman shrug at him and then turned to look at the Captain inquisitively.
“Normally,” Captain Dunrathy said to him, “the run to Pohang from here is a minimum of eight jumps, ten if your navigator is second rate. Only the best are accurate enough to try it in less than that. We’ve never done it in less than seven.”
“This time, Ev,” Katayoun said with a vague shrug, “I just have a feeling. Maybe young Henri here will bring us luck.”
“If he does, I might just hire him full–time. How do you feel about that, lad?”
Henri shrugged in turn. It had been years since he had been aboard an interstellar craft. He had forgotten most of the details.
“Why so many jumps?” he asked.
“It’s like playing golf,” Katayoun said.
Henri had to struggle to remember the game. It was not particularly popular on Bayonne, but had survived on other worlds.
Henri let his confusion show. Katayoun smiled.
“First,” she explained, “you wallop the crap out of the ball, as far as you can, aiming at a flag way downrange. With each swing, you get closer, but you have to stop and calculate how far away you are, and then try to either jump the right distance, or jump to some safe midpoint where you can turn and jump again. In golf, a dog–leg.”
“Okay,” Henri agreed. Not that he had the least understanding of how it was actually done.
“What’s she’s not saying, lad,” Dunrathy spoke up, “is that she’s got a gift for jumping to the right places. A touch. Not many others can do that. So they take more jumps. Safer, but takes longer. Two jumps might save us a day, day and a half. That adds up. Means we get to market faster with goods. Means people trust us more with hauling post between stars. Means profit.”
That, Henri understood. Father might have phrased it more eloquently, or more esoterically, but the concepts underlying were no different. Faster transport meant riches.
For Jean–Michel Baudin, it had meant turning Baudin & Sons into a major commercial house with nearly two dozen interstellar freighters and almost a hundred local transports. Evanston Dunrathy had never dreamed that big, but was every ounce the same man as Henri’s father.
Katayoun shrugged at the two men. “There’s just a feel to it, is all,” she said. “I can’t put it into words.”
Henri considered what Katayoun was trying to say. “When everything comes together just right with Nyange,” he said, “it is the same way.”
“Nyange?” she asked.
“My violin.”
“Is that Kiswahili?”
“Yes,” Henri said. “She was originally built on Zanzibar, more than five centuries ago. Right after the Revival took hold.”
“You didn’t make it, master musician?” Captain Dunrathy asked.
“Sadly no, Captain,” Henri chuckled. “The wood on Bayonne is good, but there are better materials on other worlds. Part of my journey is to find them.
“I meant to ask you earlier,” Katayoun said, “your violin, Nyange, doesn’t have frets, like guitars do. How do you know where to put your fingers?”
“Practice,” Henri smiled across the deck at her. “After that, I have to listen. When I have the fingering right, she will be singing to me.”
“I see,” she replied wistfully. “It would be nice if the stars would sing to me.”
“Maybe you just aren’t listening the right way,” Henri said.
Three
Henri heard a woman singing. For a moment, he thought it was his mother’s voice, but Emily was a contralto, like Katayoun, and this woman was a mezzo–soprano, a warm and agile voice ranging notes slowly up and down.
There were no words, just pure tones. She drew Henri up out of his warm bed and into the cozy darkness of his tiny cabin.
The song seemed to come from all directions, like a sound under the salt–water sea, so Henri closed his eyes and turned slowly in place to listen.
There.
He opened the door to his cabin and stepped out into the hallway. It was night–shift, so the lights were at half. The dimness made the hallway look like a long cave into the side of a dormant volcano.
No one was about, so Henri followed the sound of her singing forward. Up the stairs to the command deck and forward again. It seemed she might be sitting on the otherwise–quiet bridge, perhaps carding wool, or building cloth on a loom. The tune had that ethereal vagueness he had heard his Mother sing, almost hum, to herself when she thought she was alone.
But this was different in ways he could not touch. Higher, the mezzo–soprano, but richer and stronger, even when it was so quiet as to nearly vanish.
Henri felt her song resonating in the marrow of his bones, an inescapable vibration that would not be denied. He followed her song onto the bridge.
From what Henri could remember of the schedule, Qing should have the night shift tonight. The man had gone straight to bed after helping them with the load, but he was nowhere to be seen now. He should be sitting here right now, perhaps kneeling at her feet in worship.
But the bridge was empty.
Captain Dunrathy kept the view–ports covered over when in the chaotic depths of Jumpspace, so t
he room was just the end of the cave. Perhaps the Temple sanctuary at the very heart of the space. The light here was warmer, a golden–hued change from the silvers behind him. Her voice was strongest here, wordless and warm as it caressed his skin.
Henri spied the jumpboard, located on the bridge’s nose, between the two great eyes. They were hours yet from completing that first great leap, the walloping that would leave the ball halfway to the flag. Five more awaited, after they had landed and looked around.
Five more leaps to Pohang. The first stop on the Story Road. Perhaps Bayonne had been the first stop? A tide of invisible energy rose out of the deck and engulfed him as he stood there. Her singing doubled in depth and intensity until his limbs shook.
Henri looked down and realized that he had carried Nyange with him as he left his cabin. The compulsion upon him would brook no resistance. He lifted the wooden songmaker to his chin and played a counterpoint to the song she sang, the notes coming from his soul rather than his heart or his head.
It started strong, like the best love songs. Deep, almost at the bottom of Nyange’s register. Without the fifth string, it would have been beyond him to play as he heard it. Powerful, like the evening tide coming up the sands.
One note built upon another, layers of sound and power, harmonies of voice reaching out to her in encouragement. He bowed slowly, listening to his instrument sing, listening to her sing.
Henri remembered to open his eyes.
She stood there, distant but nearly solid. Her eyes drew him closer, the promise of the tempest and the morn.
She stood as though the jumpboard was just a single sheet of perfect glass separating them. The jumps and planets on the board came alive as he watched, hovering in the space between them. She sang as well, pure sounds that hinted at words in a language he did not know.
Henri pushed his heart into the notes, playing so intensely now that he thought the whole ship might be listening, but he dared not turn to look, spellbound.
She reached out to him, to the stars and the jump links, a gold and silver chain with two emeralds and two sapphires. Each star began to sing as well, a church bell choir with the power of five counties contained in those four tones.
Henri played.
As he watched, the silver links between worlds faded and blurred, transformed into a golden ribbon stretching across space, connecting worlds invisibly. Lily pads disappeared as he watched, replaced by a bridge spanning the depths of space.
Her singing reached a crescendo more intense than orgasm, drawing Henri helplessly along. The very walls of the bridge vibrated under the unleashed power. Henri’s shoulders hurt from the intensity of his playing.
And then, like a soap bubble, it vanished.
Henri nearly collapsed to the deck, wrung like a rag. For a moment, it was all he could do to stand and gasp, blowing like a winning horse.
He turned and staggered from the empty bridge. Down the short hallway. Sidestep to the stairs and down a deck. Aft to his cabin door, still gaping like a whale’s mouth ready to swallow him whole. A moment to set Nyange to rights. The warmth of his covers.
A return to his dream.
Ξ
“So how do you figure out where you came out of Jumpspace?” Henri asked.
He had been two days working up the courage to ask her, afraid he might reveal too much. Spacers were known to be a superstitious lot.
Katayoun turned to look at him across the bridge as he settled into the Captain’s empty chair.
“You want the easy explanation or the complicated one?” she asked after a moment. At least she didn’t treat him like a landsman, although that was probably closer to the truth than he wanted to know. He was learning.
It’s what Bards did.
Learn.
Remember.
Teach.
Possibly entertain, but always with a purpose.
“Both,” he smiled at her. “Easy first.”
He glanced at the jumpboard, but it was just a board today. Five hops complete. The next one was supposed to drop them to the soft edge of Pohang’s gravity well, the planet, not the star. Both had the same name. He had learned to make that distinction quickly.
She pressed a button on her console that caused the board to transform. A single emerald planet suddenly hung in darkness, with a blood–orange star behind it. The planet shrank and vanished as the star centered on the screen, surrounded by long lists of details. Color, relative intensity and luminosity, vectors of movement relative to a score of other nearby stars.
“Once you drop out, you look around, Henri,” she began. “You meant to go somewhere, so you should assume you were close and then figure out how much you missed by.”
“Missed?”
“Space is not smooth,” she smirked at him. “In fact, it’s like driving on a bumpy road, in a truck with bad steering.”
At that moment, the luxury of his upbringing became painfully evident. Henri had never ridden in a poorly–maintained land vehicle. Jean–Michel had always had enough money to fix them or purchase new ones. And flying craft were even less forgiving, so they were constantly attended to by experts, employees of Baudin & Sons.
Money.
He hoped nothing of that showed on his face.
She didn’t react if it did.
“Go on,” he said.
“So on a short hop, or a well–landed one,” she continued, “you will only be a few percentage points off. Now, imagine jumping thirty light years in one go. Those A.U. add up.”
“A.U.?” Henri hadn’t felt stupid when he’d gotten out of bed this morning. The day was apparently young.
“Astronomical Units,” she said with a smile. “Before the Homeworld was destroyed, the distance between Earth and its star. Around one hundred fifty million kilometers. A little over eight light minutes.”
“Oh. So eight jumps instead of six means smaller margin of error?”
“Correct,” she said, “but each time you land, you have to spend a while locating yourself. Depending on the neighborhood, that might take eight to twelve hours.”
“Why?” Yes, definitely a stupid kind of day.
Apparently, none of his predecessors had ever chosen to formally send Bards into space to learn. He would have to argue with the other masters for adjustments to the training regime, if they were going to continue to be relevant in a galactic age. He needed to know space better.
So did they.
Katayoun pointed to the display showing the star Pohang.
“Not quite the single most common type of star around, but close. You come out of Jumpspace and see one close by, all good,” she continued, “but you still have to make sure it is the right star, and then calculate relative motions, and then hop closer.”
“Golfing,” Henri guessed.
“Putting,” she corrected with another smile, more sly this time. “Knowing just how to use your big stick to get the ball where you want it. Soft, controlled strokes as you get right up to the edge of the hole. That point where power gives way to technique. Right before victory.”
Henri blinked as his brain processed what she said, as well as how she had said it.
Had she really just…?
Cowardice seemed the safest solution. He still had a ways to travel with these people and didn’t understand all their social dynamics. This woman seemed to have a lot of older brothers on this crew. And apparently a great deal more experience in these sorts of things than he did.
“So why can’t you study the stars from Jumpspace? Save the time when you land?”
That, happily, seemed to derail whatever train of thought Katayoun had climbed onto this morning. Her face went all scrunchy with confusion.
Henri discovered dimples he hadn’t seen before. Cute ones.
“Light doesn’t work that way in Jumpspace,” she said warily.
Henri managed to stop himself before the words were out of his mouth.
What about song? Have you ever listened to the st
ars sing?
It was good he stopped. She would definitely stop flirting if she thought he was crazy.
But who could he ask? Who wouldn’t think he was completely space–touched?
Four
Just the smell was almost enough to send Henri into paroxysms of joy.
Wood.
Samples and boards and blocks and pegs and dust.
Every color from the purest driven snow to the darkest ebony. Every flavor of cream, or brown, or red. Blues. Purples. Greens.
Space was overwhelming.
Henri could see ten years’ worth of violin construction, just within easy reach of where he stood. Exotic masterworks. Bizarre little pochettes. Sturdy training fractionals.
It didn’t help matters that his father had sent him into space with enough credit to simple buy this entire shop.
He tried not to drool on the material at hand.
All that wood. But it wasn’t what he needed.
His business sense kicked him in the shins.
Everything here was at least seven middlemen removed from the source. Even the bulky little man on the other side of the counter in this tiny shop was a middleman, a specialist who’s whole business was supplying the kinds of high–end woods that craftsmen like luthiers needed to do their work. Like him.
The prices weren’t even outrageous, once you factored in drayage and Port of Origin fees.
Henri stopped himself cold by visualizing a woman throwing a glass of water in his face. Granted, it hadn’t been water that particular woman had been drinking, but the image worked enough to shock him back to normalcy.
He reached out and caressed a block of azure wood as long as his arm and thick as his fist, internally striped with navy, blemished occasionally by cream spots. He would have guessed the width at forty centimeters. Call it a long cubit. Enough for his needs.
Back home, Bayonne maples had formed the core of the craft for more than a millennia. Even Nyange had been constructed from a variant of a maple on Zanzibar. Without the Master’s Mark, no one would be able to tell any difference without playing it. Bayonne maple was rich. Nyange was just that much better. Most of that was the wood, regardless of what some masters might tell students about their secrets.
