Glory

by Alfred Coppel

  “Give me a hand with the port foretops’l, Damon” she said through the drogue. “The silly monkeys are trying to furl it wrinkled”

  Damon launched himself upward to join her. Near Anya, and inside the dome, he could almost ignore his acrophobia.

  Through the drogue Anya sent a series of sharp commands to the monkeys. “Damn” she said. “They aren’t responding. How long since they recharged, Damon?”

  “Twenty-one hours, Sailing Master.”

  “Shit. They aren’t holding a charge. The cybercells need replacing, Duncan?”

  Duncan appeared at her side.

  “Take over? Send the foretop team to the Monkey House. I’ll go out. I don’t want to lose that sail.”

  She released her drogue and made for the transit tube. As she floated over Marq’s pod, the Frenchman’s eyes opened and stared at her.

  Three decks down, in the vast empty spaces of what was once the hospital, Dietr Krieg received a series of signals from the computer and frowned.

  He removed his drogue and stared perplexedly at the graphical interface. The life-signals of the crew--including his own--were represented there in light-bars. It was a visual approximation of the information that customarily came to him in a far more refined form through the drogue.

  He reset the drogue in his socket and said, “Duncan?”

  “What is it, Dietr?”

  “Take a look at Jean, will you?”

  There was a long pause during which the light-bar representing Jean Marq’s life-signals twitched and waved across a cathode ray plate.

  Duncan replied, “Jean says to fuck off, Dietr.”

  The neurocybersurgeon sensed the impatience in both Duncan and Marq. Sailors tended to be edgy when a complicated maneuver was being performed. Krieg was not interested in spacemanship. He had no interest whatever in ship-handling. He understood that today’s evolution entailed much furling of sails, resetting of yards, and eventually a tack and a close pass by Drache followed by a new course and a long fall to the inner system. All of which meant orbit at Voerster in a week and a month of solitude while the rest of the crew went downworld. Dietr Krieg avoided going down to the planets Glory visited. It was foolish, he knew, but he had the illogical impression that spending time downworld would steal from his allotted uptime. It was a ridiculous notion. Time dilation did not work that way. Time was time and objective reality was what one experienced. No more than that. But he felt it nonetheless, and usually stayed aboard, Wired to the medical banks of Glory’s computer.

  Unlike Duncan, Anya, and Damon, the physician never thought of the time he spent Wired in terms of being at one with Glory. To Krieg the Gloria Coelis was only a construct, a thing of titanium and skylar and monofilament fabrics. The computer was the wonder, and it, according to Dietr Krieg, was only a machine.

  “What’s troubling you, Dietr?” Duncan asked.

  “It can wait. Go on about your business.” But he opened his personal medical file and made an entry:

  Strange readings on Marq. Supposition: He begins to show signs of fugue. Data as yet incomplete, but he has all the prerequisites for serious mental incapacity.

  He leaned back in his chair and considered the graphical interface. Marq’s line steadied. A less experienced physician would have been reassured. Krieg was not. “Fugue” was a swift flight from reality during which the subject could act with perfect normality. When the fugue terminated, the subject would remember nothing of what had transpired during the affected time. Jean Marq was a prime candidate for a swift progression from neurosis to psychosis and a flash into fugue. Dietr Krieg knew his history. It was in the database.

  He closed his eyes. “Jean?”

  “What the fuck do you want, Dietr? I’m busy now.”

  The response was more violent man the occasion called for. Jean Marq was hardly sailing the ship alone. Duncan and Damon Ng were on the bridge with him, and Anya Amaya was just now stepping through a valve onto Glory’s carapace, about to do some mysterious sailor thing or other outside the ship.

  “When your watch ends I want you to come to sick bay for some tests.”

  There was no reply through the drogue.

  “I mean it, Jean. Or no more gifts.” It was far better to suggest that he would cut off his ration of Dust than to threaten him with Duncan. Duncan was no martinet, but he could be fierce where the safety of the ship was involved.

  “Of course, Dietr.” Jean Marq’s weirdly acquiescent reply sent a shock wave through the physician. Immediately he changed computer protocol and entered the medical directory section. Here were contained volumes of medical lore, every bit of medical technology gleaned from the worlds Glory had visited, every anecdotal case study logged by each of the neurocybersurgeons who had ever worn Glory’s drogue. Here, too, was the complete medical history of everyone who had ever belonged to a Glory syndicate, back to the ancients who had sailed her for the Holy Brothers on her first journey. Viewing from this perspective, another man would have thought of Glory as an immortal being, learning, saving, guarding, being served. But to Krieg the medical archives were only data. The physician had ample intelligence. What he lacked was imagination and a sense of wonder.

  “Glory?”

  “Yes, Dietr.”

  “Give me Jean Marq’s indices.”

  The computer complied. The data was indicative, but incomplete. Dietr scowled. Psychiatry was still witchcraft, he thought. It was possible to observe, test, assume, and consider. But no psychiatrist born had ever discovered a way accurately to predict.

  Jean would bear watching. An insane man in deep space could be deadly to everyone around him.

  Anya Amaya, armored for space and carrying a small reaction motor, launched herself straight into the forest of titanium yards projecting from the foremast. With the skill of an acrobat she avoided the stays and braces, swung by and over the yards until she paused, balanced precariously on a furled stuns’l three quarters of the way to the foretop.

  She looked about her with real delight. She enjoyed being EVA but as Sailing Master she felt it unseemly to indulge herself overmuch. Serving with Duncan had a tendency to make one aware of one’s responsibility to Glory and the syndicate. There was an ancient mariner’s saying: “One hand for the ship, one hand for the sailor.” But the truth was that the ship could be more demanding even than that. Glory was a sweet ship, but she had killed sailors as any ship might do. A mistake, a slip, a moment of bad judgment could snuff out a life. The ship would go on, but the syndicate always required regeneration.

  She floated off the spar and held herself in place with a hand. She tried to imagine what it would be like to see Glory vanishing into the infinite distance while one hung alone in emptiness. That would be loneliness. She shivered a bit and dismissed the thought. She was at home in deep space, at home on Glory’s bridge, at home kilometers high in the winged rig. Her former life on New Earth grew more vague as uptime passed. She now found it sad that on her homeworld the men and women who had found her flawed and worthy only of being sold to a Goldenwing syndicate were now old, or dust.

  While I, she thought, fly among the stars.

  She released her hold on the spar and turned a slow, deliberate pirouette in the maze of rigging around her. The blinding white disk of Drache seemed to rotate around her, as though she were a sun. The starfields rose and set, reflected in golden light. How absolutely, incredibly beautiful, she thought. The hard inner surfaces of her space armor sent shivers of sensation through her body. She had not bothered to don a skinsuit. She was naked under the armor.

  Using the reaction motor she added a touch of delta-V and flew slowly away from the towering foremast. To her right the even higher, more intricate starboard mainmast loomed like a castle of light against the black of space. Everywhere she looked she could see reflected images of Drache, all made magical by the curved surfaces of skylar.

  In the brilliant lighted bridge, under the loom of Drache, Duncan said, “Jean. What’s w
rong with the cameras on the foremast?”

  Dreamily. “A small malfunction, Master, I’m working on it.”

  Duncan frowned. A Starman hated anomalies when performing a maneuver. He most particularly disliked it when shipmates behaved peculiarly. There was something odd about Jean. Krieg must have sensed it earlier.

  “Anya. Forget the sail. Let the monkeys handle it. Get back inside. We can’t see you.”

  “Yes, Duncan.”

  She was feeling slightly put upon. As Sailing Master she seldom went EVA and now Duncan was cutting short her lark. But she twisted about and pointed the reaction engine at the stars. Her delta-V increased and she seemed to be sliding down an invisible slope toward the golden wings of the foremast.

  As she made ready to alight on a spar there was a sudden movement of the braces and the spar that had been her destination jerked violently in her direction.

  It struck her across the lower abdomen and drove the breath from her body. Only the armor saved her from crippling injury. The impact doubled her over and sent her tumbling out into space. Within seconds, she was a hundred meters from the ship and the distance was increasing. She saw the reaction engine she had been carrying spin away, its polished surfaces sending out flashes of reflected light.

  With enormous effort, she controlled her voice as she called for help. “Duncan! Mayday!”

  Already Glory had moved a thousand meters away.

  Duncan was unsure what had happened to send Anya tumbling off into space. But he had a strong suspicion. For one single moment of agonizing indecision he resisted what he knew must be done and then he gave the order. “Krieg, to the bridge! Damon, get suited and go after her. Use one of the Donkeys. Move!”

  Damon floated, staring in horror at Jean Marq’s still form in the pod. “What did he do?”

  “We don’t know that he did anything, boy. Go! Now!”

  Damon flung away his-drogue and felt the slurring diminishment before flying into the transit tube. It was like a nightmare. He found his mind trying desperately not to see what Anya must now be seeing: The distance increasing between herself and Glory. The ship fading like a spark in the ghastly white glare of Drache....

  Damon had never made so swift a transfer into space armor. There was cold sweat on his flanks and face as he closed the ziplocks. He kicked off through the hangar deck valve. In the gloom he could make out Glory’s, arrowhead shuttles and the row of Donkeys--no more than sleds with reaction motors fore and aft together with maneuvering thrusters. Their best speed was no more than a dozen meters a second, but they were already moving with Glory at thirty-five percent of the speed of light.

  The hangar deck was open to space and seldom visited when not in planetary orbit. Through the open bay Damon saw the stars, bright and distant, and Drache, immense and vertigo-inducing. He straddled the Donkey and lighted off the after motor. Liquid hydrogen was converted to vapor by the instantaneous pressure drop, and the Donkey skidded along the deck to the open bay and out through it into space.

  Immediately terror surged in Damon, threatening to suffocate him. He felt himself leak urine and felt his armor suck the moisture out of his suit air.

  “Anya! Signal! Do you hear me? Light your rescue torch and signal!” That was Duncan on the ordinary radio. Drogues were useless in open space; there was not room for the supporting technology in the space armor.

  Damon heard a breathless voice in his headphones: “I am at about seven o’clock. Eight hundred meters, I think.” Anya speaking. “My strobe light is broken. Oh, God, Duncan, I’m frightened.”

  Damon tongued his transmitter, “I am out with a Donkey, Anya. I’m coming. Keep transmitting so I can home on you.”

  Behind him Glory was like a sunburst of golden light. Growing smaller as the distance increased. Overhead the huge sphere of Drache dominated the sky. Glory was close enough now so that Damon could see the swirling movement of the frozen gasses in Drache’s atmosphere. The stratospheric winds on Drache reached speeds of ten thousand kilometers per hour. At lesser altitudes, where the ice crystals blew, the wind velocity was far higher. Drache and the other gas giants in the Luyten system were failed stars, just under the mass needed for thermonuclear ignition. If any one of the six had succeeded in consuming even one of its siblings, Luyten 726 would have been a multiple system, with a close companion in addition to the distant dark dwarf brothers far beyond the Oort Cloud. And Voerster would never have been. Instead there would have been a cinder following an eccentric orbit between a fiery pair.

  “Damon, where are you?”

  Duncan, Damon thought, thank God for Duncan. He sounded as though he were calling from inside a suit. Krieg must have taken over the task of monitoring Jean Marq, and Duncan was coming out to help find Anya.

  “I am at six o’clock, Master. About five hundred meters from the ship. I have my strobe alight.”

  “Turn forty-five degrees right and then resume course. I will bracket on the other side.” Then, “Anya. Keep sending, damn it!”

  “I can still see Glory” Anya’s voice was strained to the breaking point, but she kept on. “I can see all of her starboard rig and some of the port. But she’s transiting Drache now and the glare is too great. Duncan, Damon, she’s so beautiful. She is like a golden bird, a flower, a butterfly. Did you know we had butterflies on New Earth, Duncan? We did. Our First Landers brought them. Some fool thought they made honey. Can you believe that? Oh, God, Duncan, I am so scared--”

  “We’ll find you, Anya.”

  “We won’t leave you,” Damon said.

  There was a long empty space and then, “I think I see one of you. Who has the blue Donkey? Is that you, Duncan?”

  “No, Anya. I’m on the blue,” Damon said, refusing to look up at the enormity of gas and storm that filled two-thirds of the sky. “Guide me. Talk me in.” Oh, God, hurry, Damon thought. The panic is trying to grab me by the throat. Resist. Resist!

  “It is you, Damon. Oh, good boy. Good boy. Bear right and up a little. There, can you see me? Look for me at eleven o’clock.”

  Damon forced himself to look away from the Donkey’s rudimentary instrument panel and into the sky. Instantly he felt as though he were falling.

  Resist!

  He caught sight of a slowly tumbling figure. Over and over and over again. He said, “Anya, spread your arms. It will make you stop tumbling.”

  The tumbling slowed. He drew nearer. “More, Anya. Spread your legs. Spread them.”

  Shakily: “Duncan, do you hear that? The boy thinks of nothing but sex.”

  Damon heard Duncan’s short laugh.

  He brought the Donkey to a stop relative to Anya and put out a hand. She caught it and held on. The delta-V was transmitted to the combined mass of girl, Damon, and Donkey and set it all to tumbling very slowly.

  “I am behind you,” Duncan said. Damon looked to see the Master astride a red Donkey. He matched velocities and came to a stop. Through her fogged faceplate, Anya was looking at first one then the other. Damon could see that her cheeks were wet.

  “Don’t do that, Anya. The suit can’t handle much moisture. I know,” Duncan said,

  Duncan locked his Donkey to Damon’s and turned them around. Glory was already a half dozen kilometers away. The immense span of her triple rig filled the sky with flashing light. She was like something to be seen only in the dew of an early morning on Grissom, something woven by the crystal spiders who spanned their own version of the universe--the space between the great trees--with their reflective webs. For just an instant, Damon Ng felt a blue spear of homesickness. Then he no longer did. He was at home now, as much at home as he would ever be.

  With Anya secure between them, Damon Ng and Duncan Kr advanced the reaction engines and closed the distance between themselves and the golden apparition of Glory.

  “I’ll kill him” Duncan said.

  Krieg shook his head, looking down into Jean Marq’s pod. “He is in fugue, Duncan. I have no doubt he did it to Anya, bu
t it is probable we will never really know why. One is able to behave quite rationally in fugue, but when the state passes, there is no memory of what happened during the seizure. None. He will be aware that time has passed, but knowing Jean, he will try to cover the time discrepancy.”

  “Will we have to put him ashore?” Duncan asked, frowning.

  “He can recover. Perhaps.”

  “But why did he do it? To Anya?” Damon demanded. He was sweat-drenched, with the stink of his phobia still on him. But inwardly he was angry--and proud. Anya Amaya had retired to her quarters without a comment.

  “You would have to know more about Jean than you do, boy.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Krieg’s narrow eyebrows arched. “Very well. Damon.”

  Duncan regarded the man in the pod. Krieg had surreptitiously tranquilized him on coming to the bridge. “What do we tell him, Dietr?”

  “I have an idea. It may be worthless. But we can see. It might make a difference.”

  “Anything. We have lost Han Soo; I don’t want to lose Jean too.”

  “All right. Damon. Go to his compartment and look in the drawer under his quarterberth. Bring the thing you find there.”

  Mystified, Damon Ng floated into the transit tunnel. He was back almost immediately with the paracoita.

  “He has a doll?”

  “It is a bit more than that, youngster. A little tolerance is in order,” Krieg said. He looked at Duncan. “Well, you are the Master and Commander. She’s his property, after all.”

  “My name is Amalie. Fuck me, please” the paracoita said seductively.

  Startled, Damon dropped it. It struck the deck, sensed its position, reclined, opened its thighs.

  “Yes,” Duncan said. “That may have been what he was trying to do. We will do it for him.”

  “I don’t understand any of this, Duncan,” Damon Ng protested.

  “Put her through the port.”

  “Out? Out there?”

  “Yes.”

  Damon did as he was told. Soon the paracoita was drifting free in space, a few meters from the bridge dome. She looked pathetic, her xylon hair floating in a yellow cloud about her smiling, stupid face.