Don Laperriere let go of Jackie's hand and stood there, arms folded, looking at the memorial, an unknowable thought in his mind to match the unreadable expression on his face.
"Dad, I—"
He didn't look away, but said, "They almost didn't make it through the first winter, you know. They didn't realize that they'd settled in red-bear country. This colony was put together against very long odds. Hell, it was long odds for people even to make it to the stars. Five hundred years ago, Epsilon Indi was a dot of light in an Earth telescope." He looked skyward, light and shadow on his face. "Now it's the suns."
"I don't think this is necessary, Dad. Or particularly fair."
"Jacqueline." Her father looked at her again, sadness in his eyes. "Jackie. Dear Jackie. I'm quite sure that at one time in your life you felt the way I do about Dieron, about home. I'm not sure that you feel that way anymore. I'm not sure that you can. —No, let me finish." He held up his hands when she began to protest. "The universe is a very big place and my part in it is very small. Dieron is very small, too. But it's all I ever had, all I ever wanted.
"If your information and your fears are true, the Solar Empire may not have very long. That would be a tragedy. Many worlds aren't even self-sufficient, and the end of the Empire would ruin them. But the real tragedy will happen one world at a time. If Dieron is attacked, it can't hardly defend itself. Even if it isn't destroyed by these aliens, it's for damn sure that this world will never be the same.
"Everything we've ever worked for, everything they've ever worked for"—he gestured to the six statues, grouped near the abstract representation of the crashed sleep-ship—"won't amount to anything. That won't be on any Navy report and won't make the emperor's daily briefing. The zor High Lord won't hear anything about it, either."
He took his daughter in his arms and hugged her close to his chest. "I'm sorry, Jackie. I can't help but hurt you to tell you this, because I can't ask you to do anything about it. The universe is too big and Dieron is too small."
He held her out at arm's length again. "Well, Admiral. Are you ready for some home-cooked food?"
The farm wasn't much different from how she remembered it. Dan and the Sultan, spacers for most of their lives and city-dwellers before that, had expected something a bit more low-tech and rural. Much to Jackie's amusement, they were surprised enough at the modern conveniences to receive a good tongue-lashing from Kristen.
Don Laperriere's spread was several thousand acres on North Continent, in some of the most fertile soil on the planet. Parts of it were worked by tenants, and part by robots; it was all managed from a control center that was at least as complex as the bridge of a starship. Weather control, fertilization, irrigation and planting were all managed hour by hour, day by day, mostly by Jackie's father and cousin. They both had agronomy degrees. More important, they both had that special feel for the land that any farmer has to have. They were a long way from being hayseeds and truly loved their work.
The meal was prepared and eaten with a deliberate emphasis on hospitality and courtesy. Neither Jackie nor her father brought up the weighty subjects of interstellar war, the High Nest or invading aliens; every time it crept into the conversation from other directions, one of their hosts carefully shunted it aside.
Afterward, Jackie and Kristen went for a walk while Don Laperriere served mugs of his own home-brewed beer to Dan and the Sultan on the back porch of the farmhouse. The sun had gone down and two moons were finding their way above the distant hills.
"Good stuff," the Sultan said, after taking a long drink of the beer. Then he stood up, muttered something about taking a walk, gave Dan a sly grin, and strode quickly off the porch, leaving Dan alone with Jackie's father.
That son of a bitch, Dan thought, holding his mug with both hands.
"So," Don Laperriere said.
"So."
"Merchanter now, I hear."
"Yes, sir." What am I so nervous about? he asked himself. "Fair Damsel, best ship in space."
"Better than serving aboard a warship, I guess. Especially in wartime."
"Damn straight," Dan answered, smiling, looking at Jackie's father's face done up in silvery moonlight and deep shadow. The other was just looking at him, or through him.
"Dan, if you think—"
"Mr. Laperriere, if I—"
They stopped at the same time after both trying to speak at once. Don Laperriere took a long drink from his mug, and when Dan didn't go on, he let his face soften into a smile. "Your pal likes to have you squirm," he observed.
"Drew Sabah is a sadistic bastard sometimes," Dan agreed. "But he's also one of my best friends in the world. He thought . . . I don't know. I don't know what to expect, either."
"You mean, from the father of the girl you left behind? You made the choice, son. You were both adults at the time. I'm not going to work you over for that, not after all this time."
"It seems like Kristen wouldn't mind doing it."
"Kris sees the world in black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. Nothing in between. You plant it deeper or you pull it up by the roots. Jackie used to think of things that way, too, I remember."
"Yes, she did," Dan agreed, sipping his beer. "When I first met her, and even when I left to take my own command. 'Clean break,' she said. 'No hard feelings.' Fair winds, fare thee well—all that." He smiled. "'Course, the next time we met, she punched me in the mouth."
"She didn't."
"Damn straight," Dan said again, and mimicked a right hook sailing up into his jaw, his face turning aside at the blow. "Knocked me on my ass. That woman can hit." They laughed together for a few moments.
"I know. I taught her how. I guess the Academy taught her even more, though."
"The Academy taught her a lot of things," Dan said, looking away at the smaller moon, low in the sky. "In the last six months she's had to unlearn most of them. The emperor was ready to string her up by her epaulets at one point, but she turned into a deputy of the High Nest and they backed off. It's as if she's been cut adrift from everything that she ever believed."
"It wouldn't be the first time," Don answered, setting down his by-now mostly empty mug on the porch beside his chair. "Twenty years ago, when she first began to consider a military career, she made it very clear to us that Dieron was too damned small for her." He gestured vaguely toward the moons. "She wanted us to move away from here, to go to the homeworld.
"'This is my homeworld,' I told her. 'No, Dad, I mean Earth,' she said. 'Humanity's homeworld.' Well, we argued: I'd never been there, but you study it in school: the wars, the ecological disasters, the whole thing. 'Look,' I said. 'Dieron has centuries of history and we've mostly done it right: not much overcrowding, biosphere management, stable environment, no wars. What's Earth got that Dieron doesn't? What's wrong with Dieron?'
"'It isn't enough' she told me. Dieron wasn't enough for her—at sixteen! This place wasn't enough, her mother and I weren't enough, you weren't enough. I suspect that the Service wasn't enough, either. I don't know if she's still looking for something, but I hope she has time to find it."
"So where do you go from here?" Kristen half sat and half leaned on a rock ledge overlooking a stream. Umbrella-trees partially obscured the view of the moons rising in the night sky.
"Back to Zor'a," Jackie answered. "The High Lord—well, actually, one of her advisors—sent me a letter that I got just before I came down planetside, asking me to hurry back."
"'Her'?"
"esShaLie'e," Jackie said, and the zor word sounded out of place to her even as she said it "'High Lord' is a bad translation; it doesn't denote either gender, and it happens that the current High Lord is female, hi Sa'a is the daughter of the previous High Lord, Ke'erl."
"Hmm." Kristen crossed and uncrossed her arms, as if she was a bit uncomfortable with the idea. "How well do you speak, uh, zor?"
"The Highspeech? Well, I'm fairly fluent, though without wings I can't communicate certain things."
"
Learned it at the Academy, I suppose."
"Six months ago I could barely get the tones and glottals in the right place. Ch'k'te—" She felt a chill run through her. "My exec on Cicero taught me some of the language, but recent experiences gave me fluency."
"'Recent experiences' . . ."
"It's . . . hard to explain." Jackie sat on a small boulder, hands in her lap, feeling the gyaryu pressing against her hip. It was quiet here in the woods: no sounds of life-support systems, no electronics at all—just animals going about their business and the wind rustling in the leaves.
"I'm not sure I understand."
"I'm not sure I do, either. Lots of things seem to have changed—"
"Present company included," Kristen observed. "I don't think I've seen your dad look so worried for years: What did you tell him, that the world's coming to an end?"
Jackie looked away, toward the nearby stream, unable to answer.
"Listen, cousin. You get to fly through here like a celebrity. I have to live here. What in hell is going on?"
"The world's coming to an end."
"Very funny—"
"I'm not joking, Kris." Jackie couldn't keep the pain from her expression. "We're at war with a powerful enemy, capable of destroying us, defeating us, even taking our place. Things will happen so fast that there will be no time to react, let alone counteract them."
Kristen didn't seem convinced. "This is all a long way from Dieron."
"Not really. What's about to happen will touch everywhere. Even Dieron. And I'm all but powerless to stop it."
A storm rolled off the Livingston Mountains late that night, thunder in a bass rumble and lightning bright enough to scour the fields with flashes of near-daylight. The planetside sounds might have been what brought Jackie close to consciousness, but it was a soft voice calling her name that finally woke her up.
She sat up in the bed in the guest bedroom on the ground floor and looked out the window. Out on the front lawn, twenty meters from the farmhouse, she could see a human figure illuminated by the distant flashes of lightning.
"Jackie," the voice said again, and she felt a chill, recognizing the voice.
"Mother?" Her stomach jumped. As she used to do when she wanted to leave quietly, she got out of bed, walked to the window and swung her legs out. She was wearing nothing but a long T-shirt, a concession to modesty that she'd have skipped if she'd not been in her father's house. The only thought that passed through her head as she dropped the half-meter to the grass was, What the hell, it's a dream.
"Jackie," the voice repeated, and the figure beckoned to her.
She hadn't dreamed about her mother for years. Grace Laperriere had died of a heart condition a few years after Jackie had received her commission. Grace had always been fragile, like a fine porcelain doll her father had collected; her advice and her wisdom had been gentle and well measured as well. Her death, which took everyone in their small family by surprise, had been hard to handle. The impact of Grace's absence from the house, once they'd buried her on First Landing Hill, was out of all proportion to her quiet, soft-spoken nature.
"Mom," Jackie said, a chill from the night air running through her.
"Jackie, you should put something on your feet; you'll catch cold." Grace Laperriere walked a few steps toward her daughter. She was just as Jackie remembered her, small and fine-featured. "You're looking well."
"Th-thanks. What brings you—"
"I was worried about you, dear." Grace turned aside with her hands folded in front of her and seemed to dig at something with the toe of one shoe. "You seem to have changed a lot recently."
"Lots of things have changed, Mom. I—I didn't realize you were watching."
"I watch," she said. Lightning played across the distant peaks, illuminating the scene in weird, yellow-white light. "Mostly I watch your dad, but I watch you, too."
Jackie took a step or two closer. Her mind was racing, trying to establish perspective: Is this a dream, really? The ground felt damp and cold underfoot; the air was sharp and tangy.
She didn't answer, and her mother went on: "I think you've gone too far afield, dear. You were always a wanderer and you've been away a long time."
"My career kept me away."
"It always did," her mother answered, and then there was a peal of thunder almost coinciding. Her mother's gaze fixed on her. "Even when you were needed. Even when I died," she said.
A chill breeze rippled the grass on the lawn. Grace Laperriere's expression, framed in sadness, bathed in shadow, was clear from ten meters away.
"What are you saying?" Jackie felt her hands clench into fists, but she couldn't look away.
"It's time for you to come home," Grace said, extending her arms. A tear seemed to be forming in one eye.
Jackie couldn't look away, and somewhere in the corner of her mind she realized that she couldn't. The mountains, the lightning, even the umbrella-trees that lined the yard, were becoming hard to see because of the attention she was fixing on the figure of her approaching mother, now a few meters away. Almost involuntarily, feeling the wet grass under her bare feet, Jackie began to step toward the figure that was smiling now, teeth bared—
Suddenly another peal of thunder reverberated across the sky. Without conscious effort on her part, Jackie's hands came close together and the gyaryu seemed to materialize in them. Around her, eleven misty images snapped into existence: She recognized Sergei, Marais and Kale'e—the last zor to bear the gyaryu. From that hint she determined that the other zor-images around her must be other bearers of the sword from previous eras.
Her mother's image began to melt and change, like a snake shedding its skin: The arms came together and were now holding a sword that hissed and snarled, making Jackie's flesh crawl. The shoulders grew wings and the face changed from her mother's, to take on the form of another—one that she knew well.
She quickly retreated several steps, scarcely able to look away, while the hsi-images around her retreated in like fashion. But instead of attacking, the zor lowered his e'chya slightly, his wings expressing an emotion of deep irony, while the rest of his stance suggested that he was not at all concerned.
"Shrnu'u HeGa'u," she said softly. "I should have known."
"ge Qu'u," he answered.
She didn't recognize the prenomen but the gyaryu did, and found it insulting: the sword snarled at the zor's remark.
"We have fought each other in many ages and worn many guises. It astounds me, Crawler-servant, that you are so easily deceived this time."
"There isn't anything you won't stoop to, is there?" Jackie answered. "I didn't know who you were the last time, but I damn well know now."
"Spare me the bravado," he said, whirling rapidly and lashing out at a hsi-image, which he struck in the chest; it burst and vanished and she felt a sharp pain between her breasts. "You know nothing, for the Crawler adores fools and despises those who think for themselves."
The comments were intended to anger her. She felt angry; but it was a cold and serious anger, giving her a feeling of near-calm. She concentrated and felt the strength of the gyaryu course through her. Almost at once, without effort, the hsi-images of Sergei, Marais and the eight remaining zor seemed to gain solidity. They no longer mimicked her movements but began to move on their own, spreading out to take up positions along a wide front, all well out of the reach of the e'chya. Another hsi-image faded into existence: another zor she didn't know.
Shrnu'u HeGa'u backed away, sensing that the battleground had suddenly and abruptly changed beneath him. "My Master has changed the rules of the game, Mighty Hero," he said, his voice and wings conveying, ever so slightly, less confidence. "I have been watching you closely."
"Too close for me," she said, moving forward, the gyaryu held out in front of her. The previous bearers of the sword began to advance as well, of their own volition. For each step they took forward, Shrnu'u HeGa'u took a step back.
"The rules have changed," he repeated. "The battleground
of the mind is not enough. The Plane of Sleep has been breached, and your own side has breached it."
"I don't believe that," she replied, wondering to herself what the hell it all meant.
"Go to the Stone and ask," he said, continuing to retreat. Lightning continued to illuminate the scene. "Your wisest ones will not know what is truth, what illusion." A breeze ruffled through his wings. "The Inner Peace is broken and it comes about because of fools who thought themselves wise. Go and ask them," he said, over the thunder that cascaded through the air. The storm was close enough to feel now, descending across the plain, rain beginning to sheet down.
"You've been on Fair Damsel all the time," she said suddenly. "From the time I came aboard at Cle'eru. Watching. Ch'k'te said so. You opened the doors. You confronted me at Crossover—in the Center—and Ch'k'te killed you—"
"A vessel only," Shrnu'u HeGa'u said over the rising wind. He began to rise into the air, his wings fighting against the storm and the strong gravity. "You cannot kill me, mighty Qu'u. And I cannot kill you. If my Master traps you in Ur'ta leHssa, you can suffer worse than death; but death is beyond us both."
"Then what are you trying to do?" she shouted. "Why are you here? Why do you come to me in a dream, when—"
"'Dream'?" The zor howled something unintelligible. "Do you believe this to be a dream?"
He raised his wings in a gesture that was untranslatable, but somehow seemed almost obscene—
And again the entire scene was suddenly illuminated by a bolt of lightning close by—close enough to make the hairs rise along her arms and neck. It seemed to strike the hovering figure of Shrnu'u HeGa'u amidships—There was a sharp crack, a report like the firing of a rifle— She felt something, someone, grasping her left arm and turning her around. She pulled loose and stepped back, bringing the gyaryu to guard . . . and found herself facing her father, standing there in nothing but his shorts, a frightened look on his face. Kristen was running across the yard, an ablative fire-extinguisher in her hand, to an umbrella-tree that was on fire. Dan and the Sultan, similarly undressed, had just come out onto the front porch.
The Dark Ascent Page 28
