The Story Road

by Blaze Ward

  Something about this blue piece spoke to him. Almost sang. The feel of the grains bespoke a deep murmuring undertone that would reverberate across forest glades, summoning the little furry creatures to listen, as though part of a children’s tale.

  He might have to try that someday, just to see if it worked.

  The shopkeeper waited carefully.

  Henri could see an anxiousness around the eyes, and in the set of his hands. Bards were trained to know their audience at an unconscious level. Baudins were trained to business. It probably was an unfair combination, right now.

  “Do we know from whence it originated?” Henri began, lifting the azure board from the shelf to sight down the perfectly cut edges.

  “Nay, master,” the shopkeeper replied. “I do not even know the kind of tree. Rumor has it that it came down The Story Road.”

  “You know such a term?”

  “Much of my clientele,” the man shrugged simply, “are musicians and craftsmen such as yourself. They’ve talked of it, although it is not a common term.”

  “Indeed not, good sir,” Henri said, “but welcome nonetheless. Let us haggle.”

  Ξ

  The kitchen table aboard Marrakesh was a mess. It couldn’t be helped as he worked. At least Henri had found a sheet of baking paper to lay down on the table. Everything he was doing would recycle, so he could just fold up the paper and compost it.

  Two fingers of the blue wood had been cut out of one end with the finest saw he could locate in the machine shop. A cutting laser would have been faster, but the heat might alter the tone of the wood. Best to keep to the traditional ways.

  Around him, he had set an array of ever–finer files and sandpapers he was using to polish the smaller block into a smooth shape he could carry with him in his satchel. It was no larger than a goose egg.

  Perhaps he would rummage through the ship later and see if he could find the makings for a stain and seal for the wood as well. He was pretty sure what kind of tone a violin would make from such wood. He dreamed of that voice.

  Isaac entered the kitchen a step ahead of Katayoun and Captain Dunrathy. The latter two stopped in surprise. Isaac continued to the brewing machine and began to push buttons.

  Henri looked down in dismay at his mess. “The time must have gotten away from me,” he offered weakly.

  “Actually, Henri,” Captain Dunrathy said, “the locals came early and we have already off–loaded. Tis time for a spot of tea and perhaps a snack. The heavy work will be tomorrow, if you are interested in joining us.”

  Henri carefully began sorting tools into his battered, old cloth tool roll as Dunrathy and Katayoun came closer. The roll could mostly be closed up. Perhaps he could just use sandpaper from this point and put the rest of the tools back into his steamer trunk.

  “Absolutely, Captain.”

  He grabbed the far corners of his catch paper and carefully folded it in onto itself, keenly aware that he suddenly had an audience as he did so.

  “That’s a lovely piece of wood,” Katayoun said, pointing but not touching. “What kind is it?”

  She and Dunrathy took two seats, on either side, but left him space.

  “Nobody seems to know, madam,” Henri replied. “I tried four other shops after I bought the original block. Nothing but blank stares.”

  “What will you make with it?” Dunrathy inquired politely.

  “At some point, another violin,” Henri replied. “But first, I want to know its origins. The best anyone has been able to offer was that it came from farther up The Story Road.”

  Isaac joined them, taking the last chair and blowing on his tea.

  He took a drink and eyed Henri calmly over the rim of his mug. “Ballard,” he said.

  “It grows on Ballard?” Henri asked. “Or Ballard imports it from somewhere else?”

  Isaac shrugged and drank his tea, never one for many words.

  Henri turned to Captain Dunrathy with a wry smile. “It appears I will be with you for at least three more stops, Captain.”

  He was greeted by three warm faces, although Katayoun’s wry smile left him unsettled.

  Up until now, he had thought he understood girls.

  Five

  “Is that a book?”

  Henri looked up as Katayoun stood in the door to the bridge, staring at him. He’d been so engrossed he hadn’t heard her approach.

  “Uhm, yeah.”

  Nothing to be defensive about. Books are acceptable. Not contraband. Right? RIGHT?

  “Where did you get it?” she asked as she leaned uncomfortably closely over his shoulder in a way that did interesting things to her buttoned–up–front shirt. Gappy kinds of things. Distractingly–gappy.

  “Zanzibar,” he replied after taking a moment to re–engage his brain and look up at her instead of at her breasts. “Tried to find something on Saxon when we were there, but everything was either children’s books or repair manuals. I needed something theoretical and there is nothing remotely close in the ship’s library.”

  Before he could react, Katayoun plucked the book out of his hands, flipped it closed, and studied the spine. He relaxed a touch when he saw that she had a finger tucked in to mark his page.

  After a moment, she looked at him blankly. “What language is that?”

  “Kiswahili,” he said with a smile. Being a Bard meant being broadly educated, literate in all seven major trade languages, plus a good number of obscure ones. “Theoretical Understandings of Higher Dimensions: A Guide to Jumpspace, by Nobura Hisikawa.”

  “M’kay,” she replied, somewhat confused. “Why?”

  Henri bit his tongue to keep from saying something tart. He had heard that exact same tone of voice from a young apprentice who had just started with his former master as he left. Some things were apparently universal.

  “I am a Bard, m’lady,” Henri said with a shrug,. “I spend my life in pursuit of knowledge, that I may share it in other places.”

  After traveling with these people, and all the flirting with Katayoun, Henri was absolutely certain how much of his strange dreams he planned to share with them, with her. Not one damned bit. They would think him utterly daft.

  “Uh huh,” she said. “Hyperspace?”

  She turned sideways, still holding his book, then sat down in his lap before Henri realized what she was doing.

  For a woman nearly his own height, she was all legs, so her eyes were now on a level with his. She was also at least ten years older than he was, maybe even more. She might be as much as forty years old. Henri was unsure how to proceed.

  Cowardice it had been. Cowardice it would continue to be.

  Henri reached out and carefully took the book from her hands. He flipped it open to his page and then back a few to a page of diagrams.

  It became difficult to concentrate as her hands started to wander across his chest and sides.

  “All of Jumpspace is permeated with a roiling chaos of radiation,” he answered, trying to maintain his focus has she leaned close and began to breathe on his ear.

  “Go on,” she whispered. A touch of her tongue sent shivers down his spine.

  “Scientists like Hisikawa believed that the cosmic microwave background radiation visible in normal space should have an analogy in Jumpspace. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever investigated.”

  “Sounds interesting,” Katayoun continued, biting him lightly on the neck. “What else?”

  Henri gave up trying to ignore the situation and closed the book, after memorizing the page number. He set it on the console and grabbed her wrists softly, pulling her around until they were nearly nose to nose.

  “Why now?” he asked, leaving aside all the flirtations on her part over the last week. The ever–less–subtle hints, the looks, the accidental touches.

  Katayoun studied him for a moment. There was something in her eyes behind the flirtation. He had known many women in his brief career, but very few of them had anything approaching this woman’s depth
s.

  And he could also see pain.

  Not much, just enough that he could see it, staring into her soul. Even a journeyman Bard would have probably missed it. But he could see it.

  “Because you haven’t taken the hint,” she said quietly.

  Henri smiled. “Oh, beautiful lady,” he said with a low chuckle. “I’m not stupid. On a ship of total strangers, one lovely woman with half a dozen big brothers watching over her? You want me to risk getting crossways with the Captain and his whole crew?”

  “Evanston Dunrathy is my uncle,” she said.

  Henri could hear the steel in her voice now. It matched her eyes. A woman making her own way, not a young innocent girl.

  “Oh,” he blinked in surprise. “Really?”

  “Really,” she replied. Yes. Steel.

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel safer, seducing his niece?”

  “His niece is seducing you, Henri Baudin,” Katayoun whispered. “She is afraid that you are going to walk out that hatch tomorrow and disappear somewhere on Ballard and she might never see you again.”

  She reached out and tangled both hands in his hair, pulling his face close enough to kiss.

  Ξ

  Henri awoke from his dream with a start.

  He had been deep in the most amazingly–realistic fantasy before he’d breached, coming up from the depths of his sleep like a whale. He took several deep breaths to still his heart as the vision came back to him.

  Katayoun seducing him on Captain Dunrathy’s bridge, over a textbook. Dragging him down to his cabin. Turning the lights down to the dimmest setting and then stripping and standing proudly nude before him, a goddess to be worshipped.

  Worship.

  Love–making like music, engulfing him in sounds and touch, smell and tastes. Katayoun atop him, lost in her own ecstasy.

  At one point, even the goddess of music had come to watch over them, reading that book and leaving it open to a particular page before fading from sight.

  Such an amazing dream.

  Henri glanced at the door. He had left his cabin lights dim before going to bed. Hisikawa’s book sat on his chair, open to a mid–point beyond what he had read so far.

  Henri blinked. He had been sure he had closed the book. It was nearly one hundred years old at this point, so it required care. He still needed to make an oilskin and felt wrap to protect it from the elements.

  Tomorrow.

  Henri sighed. He could smell Katayoun’s scent, feel her touch, hear her laugh.

  It was strange, it was odd, it was lovely. Katayoun had really gotten under his skin.

  He rolled onto his side, facing the cabin door, and settled his blanket a little closer around him.

  A warm hand slid up his side and across his chest, pulling him tight. Katayoun slid closer in her sleep, pressing her chest against his back in ways that felt like points of fire. Her breath was warm against his neck.

  Henri blinked, frozen in shock.

  It hadn’t been a dream.

  Part Two: BALLARD

  Six

  The last flatbed truck trundled carefully away from the side of Marrakesh and disappeared around a corner.

  Captain Dunrathy turned to Henri with a warm smile. “So, lad,” he began, “Ye’ll be leaving us here?”

  Henri glanced at the Captain, but his attention was on Katayoun. She met his eyes for a second before hers dropped.

  She hadn’t believed his words this morning. He imagined other words from other men, burning other bridges in her past.

  “Aye, Captain Dunrathy,” Henri replied. “But you’ll be back here in exactly eight–six days.”

  He stepped close to the woman. She looked up as he put a finger lightly under her chin and lifted. Henri could see depths of pain that had been invisible before, but there were no words.

  “Creator willing,” he said quietly, “I’ll be here to meet when your run brings you back. I might even be able to help unload. And, hey, I’m going to need a ride home one of these days.”

  He leaned close and kissed her. It was a kiss with a promise. He felt her tremble for a second before her arms came up around his back.

  She broke the kiss, but held the hug.

  “I’ll give you a ride,” she whispered in his ear.

  Henri felt his smile return. “Maybe we can go golfing,” he whispered back.

  She laughed and stepped back. The pain was gone from her eyes, or at least deep enough to be invisible.

  Henri decided that there was nothing more he could do at this point. He reached for his satchel and Nyange’s case, waved to the others, and descended into the late morning, late spring sun.

  Ξ

  Ithome didn’t feel like the capital of an entire planet. Especially not one that was so central to interstellar trade, let alone the anchor point of the long–fabled Story Road.

  What it really reminded him of was a university campus, sheltered in a deep–water bay by a small mountain range that lifted storms over the water. That image was reinforced when he made it out of the newer districts surrounding the star port, with their modern, angular metal buildings in a style best called Stellar Gothic. The old downtown, when Ithome had just been a regional trading and fishing hub, that was where he found it.

  The soul of Old Ballard.

  Here, the first explorers and diplomats from Zanzibar had arrived, traveling in primitive starships designed to land on water. Of course they would seek out a largely–aquatic world like Ballard to uplift from the steam age to the stellar.

  Henri looked up, but the sky was too cloudy and overcast this morning to see the faint reflection of sunlight. Somewhere up there, a space station orbited, casting a baleful full–moon gleam down on the planet below on clear nights.

  Alexandria Station.

  The home of the University of Ballard, bridging the distant past to the modern future. The place he hoped would answer his questions about the block of wood, but, more importantly, perhaps the question of the song of the stars he heard in his dreams.

  Musica universalis. The Music of the Spheres.

  Henri let the rhythm of the city pull him hither and yon with no greater plan this morning. He stopped long enough to buy a freshly–baked meat and pastry dish from a street–side shop and took up a spot at a nearby pillar to munch the delicacy.

  The owner of the bakery appeared from around the pillar and sized him up. She was a stout, ancient woman, gray hair pulled back into a severe bun. Henri thought she might come up to his shoulder if she stood straight.

  “Busker?” she asked in English, pointing at the viola case carefully tucked in between his legs.

  It took him a moment to understand.

  “No, madam,” he said calmly. “Merely a traveler in need of sustenance. The piroshky is divine.”

  She said something else, long and filled with consonants. Henri thought he might have heard the word maestro in there somewhere, but her words raced like a rabbit through the grass as she spoke.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said when she paused for a breath.

  Another woman approached, much younger, and much prettier, but obviously kin from the bones in her face and build. The older woman must have been a stunner when she was young.

  “Grandmother asks if you might play her something,” the young woman said. “She says it has been a very long time since she heard a violin play. It is not a popular instrument here.”

  Henri took an extra moment to appreciate the beauty of the younger woman before he bowed to her elder.

  “Madam, it would be my pleasure,” he said. He turned to the younger woman. “Would you ask what she might like?”

  “Speak to me not of adventure,” the elder woman quoted the ancient song in perfect, accentless French, “but rather, tell me tales of love.”

  Henri blinked in surprise. How had an ancient Bayonne opera made its way to Ballard, to come into the possession of this tiny woman? And how had she known from whence he came?

 
; He wolfed down his last bite, bowed to the woman again, and very carefully wiped his hands clean and dry before opening the case. Nyange awaited him, lying like Excalibur nestled deep in the dark maroon felt.

  Henri noted that a small audience had gathered around him, opening a respectful gap, but practically vibrating with anticipation. He drew his instrument like he would a sword and set forth to conquer unknown worlds.

  The opening notes were always tricky. That Nyange was strung with five strings instead of four allowed him to reach down into the baritone of the man’s part and draw it forth, before ascending the heights of the female solo.

  For nearly eight minutes he played, the entire opening aria enrapturing the crowd with the notes, like a school of bright fish darting about. The sweat dripped from his forehead and nose. Even the birds fell silent. Random passers–by stopped, drawn into the gravity well of the performance and trapped there.

  Henri opened his eyes as the last trill faded slowly off the nearby buildings. Marathons probably felt like this when you crossed the finish line.

  He spied the two women close by, arms around each other, tears streaming down their faces. It was a common site as he glanced about.

  There. Standing at the edge of the crowd. The woman who haunted him.

  The goddess stepped back around a corner as he watched, forever out of reach. Only a final flash of light off of the strawberry–blond liquid gold of her hair.

  Henri smiled.

  The older woman approached and gestured him to bend lower. He did, and received a kiss. From the younger woman, another kiss, far more remarkable. Promises, cloaked in subtle blue shadows.

  A metallic sound caught his ear.

  Henri glanced down and realized that Nyange’s case was filled with coins several layers deep, in some currencies he had never seen. More joined them as the crowd jostled to show their appreciation. At least he would never go hungry on Ballard.