“Two hundred standard years!” he said once as they both sat before their consoles. He smiled a shy, crooked smile, and Holt saw that he still had teeth, even at his age—or perhaps he had teeth again. “That’s how long Cain’s been shipping, Holt. The very truth! You know, your regular man never leaves the very world he’s born on. Never! Ninety-five per cent of them, anyway. They never leave, just get born and grow up and die, all on the same world. And the ones that do ship—well, most of them ship only a little. A world or two or ten. Not me! You know where I was born, Holt? Guess!”
Holt shrugged. “Old Earth?”
Cain just laughed. “Earth? Earth’s nothing, only three or four years out from here. Four, I think. I forget. No, no, but I’ve seen Earth, the very homeworld, the seeding place. Seen it fifty years ago on the—the Corey Dark, I’d guess it was. It was about time, I thought. I’d been shipping a hundred fifty standard even then, and I still hadn’t been to Earth. But I finally got there!”
“You weren’t born there?” Holt prompted.
Old Cain shook his head and laughed again. “Not very! I’m an Emereli. From ai-Emerel. You know it, Holt?”
Holt had to think. It was not a world-name he recognized, not one of the stars his father had pointed to, aflame in the night of Ymir. But it rang a bell, dimly. “The Fringe?” he guessed finally. The Fringe was the furthest out-edge of human space, the place where the small sliver of the galaxy they called the manrealm had brushed the top of the galactic lens, where the stars drew thin. Ymir and the stars he knew were on the other side of Old Earth, inward toward the denser starfields and the still-unreachable core.
Cain was happy at his guess. “Yes! I’m an outworlder. I’m near to two hundred and twenty standard, and I’ve seen near that many worlds now, human worlds and Hrangan and Fyndii and all sorts, even some worlds in the manrealm where the men aren’t men anymore, if you understand what I’m saying. Shipping, always shipping. Whenever I found a place that looked interesting I’d skip ship and stay a time, then go on when I wanted to. I’ve seen all sorts of things, Holt. When I was young I saw the Festival of the Fringe, and hunted banshee on High Kavalaan, and got a wife on Kimdiss. She died, though, and I got on. Saw Prometheus and Rhiannon, which are in a bit from the Fringe, and Jamison’s World and Avalon, which are in further still. You know. I was a Jamie for a bit, and on Avalon I got three wives. And two husbands, or co-husbands, or however you say it. I was still shy of a hundred then, maybe less. That was time when we owned our own ship, did local trading, hit some of the old Hrangan slaveworlds that have gone off their own ways since the war. Even Old Hranga itself, the very place. They say there are still some Minds on Hranga, deep underground, waiting to come back and attack the manrealm again. But all I ever saw was a lot of kill-castes and workers and the other lesser types.”
He smiled. “Good years, Holt, very good years. We called our ship Jamison’s Ass. My wives and my husbands were all Avalonians, you see, except for one who was Old Poseidon, and Avalonians don’t like Jamies much, which is how we arrived at that very name. But I can’t say that they were wrong. I was a Jamie too, before that, and Port Jamison is a stulty, priggy town on a planet that’s the same.
“We were together nearly thirty standard on Jamison’s Ass. The marriage outlasted two wives and one husband. And me too, finally. They wanted to keep Avalon as their trade base, you see, but after thirty I’d seen all the worlds I wanted to see around there, and I hadn’t seen a lot else. So I shipped on. But I loved them, Holt, I did love them. A man should be married to his shipmates. It makes for a very good feeling.” He sighed. “Sex comes easier too. Less uncertainty.”
By then, Holt was caught. “Afterward,” he asked, his young face showing only a hint of the envy he felt, “what did you do then?”
Cain had shrugged, looked down at his console, and started to punch the glowing studs to set in a drive correction. “Oh, shipped on, shipped on. Old worlds, new worlds, man, not-man, aliens. New Refuge and Pachacuti and burnt-out old Wellington, and then Newholme and Silversky and Old Earth. And now I’m going in, as far as I can go before I die. Like Tomo and Walberg, I guess. You know about Tomo and Walberg, in here at Ymir?”
And Holt had only nodded. Even Ymir knew about Tomo and Walberg. Tomo was an outworlder too, born on Darkdawn high atop the Fringe, and they say he was a darkling dreamer. Walberg was an Altered Man from Prometheus, a roistering adventurer, according to the legend. Three centuries ago, in a ship called the Dreaming Whore, they had set off from Darkdawn for the opposite edge of the galaxy. How many worlds they had visited, what had happened on each, how far they had gotten before death—those were the knots in the tale, and schoolboys disputed them still. Holt liked to think that they were still out there, somewhere. After all, Walberg had said he was a superman, and there was no telling how long a superman might live. Maybe even long enough to reach the core, or beyond.
He had been staring at the console, daydreaming, and Cain had grinned over at him and said, “Hey! Starsick!” And when Holt had started and looked up, the old man nodded (still smiling), saying, “Yes, you, the very one! Set to, Holt, or you won’t be shipping nowhere!”
But it was a gentle rebuke, and a gentle smile, and Holt never forgot it or Cain narKarmian’s other words. Their sleep-webs were next to each other and Holt listened every night, for Cain was hard to silence and Holt was not about to try. And when the Laughing Shadow finally hit Cathaday, as far in as it would go, and got ready to turn back into the manrealm towards Celia’s World and home, Holt and narKarmian signed off together and got berths on a mailship that was heading for Vess and the alien Damoosh suns.
They had shipped together for six years when narKarmian finally died. Holt remembered the old man’s face much better than his father’s.
The Shed was a long, thin, metal building, a corrugated shack of blue duralloy that someone had found in the stores of a looted freighter, probably. It was built kilometers from the windwall, within sight of the gray walls of the stone city and the high iris of the Western Door. Around it were other, larger metal buildings, the warehouse-barracks of the shipless ul-mennaleith. But there were no ullies inside, ever.
It was near noon when Holt arrived, and the Shed was almost empty. A wide columnar coldtorch reached from floor to ceiling in the center of the room, giving off a tired ruddy light that left most of the deserted tables in darkness. A party of muttering Linkellars filled a comer off in the shadows; opposite them, a fat Cedran was curled up in a tight sleep-ball, his slick white skin glistening. And next to the coldtorch pillar, at the old Pegasus table, Alaina and Takker-Rey were sharing a white stone flask of amberlethe.
Takker spied him at once. “Look,” he said, raising his glass. “We have company, Alaina. A lost soul returns! How are things in the stone city, Michael?”
Holt sat down. “The same as always, Takker. The same as always.” He forced a smile for bloated, pale-faced Takker, then quickly turned to Alaina. She had worked the jump-gun with him once, a year ago and more. And they had been lovers, briefly. But that was over. Alaina had put on weight and her long auburn hair was dirty and matted. Her green eyes used to spark; now amberlethe made them dull and cloudy.
Alaina favored him with a pudgy smile. “ ’Lo, Michael,” she said. “Have you found your ship?”
Takker-Rey giggled, but Holt ignored him. “No,” he said. “But I keep going. Today the foxman said there’d be a ship in next week. A man-ship. He promised me a berth.”
Now both of them giggled. “Oh, Michael,” Alaina said. “Silly, silly. They used to tell me that. I haven’t gone for so long. Don’t you go, either. I’ll take you back. Come up to my room. I miss you. Tak is such a bore.”
Takker frowned, hardly paying attention. He was intent on pouring himself a new glass of amberlethe. The liquor flowed with agonizing slowness, like honey. Holt remembered the taste of it, gold fire on his tongue, and the easy sense of peace it brought. They had all done a lot of drinking in
the early weeks, while they waited for the Captain to return. Before things fell apart.
“Have some ’lethe,” Takker said. “Join us.”
“No,” Holt said. “Maybe a little fire brandy, Takker, if you’re buying. Or a foxbeer. Summerbrew, if there’s some handy. I miss summerbrew. But no ’lethe. That’s why I went away, remember?”
Alaina gasped suddenly; her mouth drooped open and something flickered in her eyes. “You went away,” she said in a thin voice. “I remember, you were the first. You went away. You and Jeff. You were the first.
“No, dear,” Takker interrupted very patiently. He set down the flask of amberlethe, took a sip from his glass, smiled, and proceeded to explain. “The Captain was the first one to go away. Don’t you recall? The Captain and Villareal and Susie Benet, they all went away together, and we waited and waited.”
“Oh, yes,” Alaina said. “Then later Jeff and Michael left us. And poor Irai killed herself, and the foxes took Ian and put him up on the wall. And all the others went away. Oh, I don’t know where, Michael, I just don’t.” Suddenly she started to weep. “We all used to be together, all of us, but now there’s just Tak and me. They all left us. We’re the only ones who come here anymore, the only ones.” She broke down and started sobbing.
Holt felt sick. It was worse than his last visit the month before—much worse. He wanted to grab the amberlethe and smash it to the floor. But it was pointless. He had done that once a long time ago—the second month after landing—when the endless hopeless waiting had sent him into a rare rage. Alaina had wept, MacDonald cursed and hit him and knocked loose a tooth (it still hurt sometimes, at night), and Takker-Rey bought another flask. Takker always had money. He wasn’t much of a thief, but he’d grown up on Vess where men shared a planet with two alien races, and like a lot of Vessmen he’d grown up a xenophile. Takker was soft and willing, and foxmen (some foxmen) found him attractive. When Alaina had joined him, in his room and his business, Holt and Jeff Sunderland had given up on them and moved to the outskirts of the stone city.
“Don’t cry, Alaina,” Holt said now. “Look, I’m here, see? I even brought food tokens.” He reached into his sack and tossed a handful onto the table—red, blue, silver, black. They clattered and rolled and lay still.
At once, Alaina’s tears were gone. She began to scrabble among the tokens, and even Takker leaned forward to watch. “Red ones,” she said excitedly. “Look, Takker, red ones, meat tokens! And silvers, for ’lethe. Look, look!” She began to scoop loose tokens into her pockets, but her hands were trembling, and more than one token was thrown onto the floor. “Help me, Tak,” she said.
Takker giggled. “Don’t worry, love, that was only a green. We don’t need worm food anyway, do we?” He looked at Holt. “Thank you, Michael, thank you. I always told Alaina you had a generous soul, even if you did leave us when we needed you. You and Jeff, Ian said you were a coward, you know, but I always defended you. Thank you, yes.” He picked up a silver token and flipped it with his thumb. “Generous Michael. You’re always welcome here.”
Holt said nothing. The Shed-boss had suddenly materialized at his elbow, a vast bulk of musky blue-black flesh. His face looked down at Holt—if you could call it looking, since the being was eyeless, and if you could call it a face, since there was no mouth either. The thing that passed for a head was a flabby, half-filled bladder full of breathing holes and ringed by whitish tentacles. It was the size of a child’s head, an infant’s, and it looked absurdly small atop the gross oily body and the rolls of mottled fat. The Shed-boss did not speak; not Terran nor ullish nor the pidgin Dan’lai that passed for crossworlds trade talk. But he always knew what his customers wanted.
Holt just wanted to leave. While the Shed-boss stood, silent and waiting, he rose and lurched for the door. It slid shut behind him, and he could hear Alaina and Takker-Rey arguing over the tokens.
The Damoosh are a wise and gentle race, and great philosophers—or so they used to say on Ymir. The outermost of their suns interlock with the innermost parts of the ever-growing manrealm, and it was on a timeworn Damoosh colony that narKarmian died and Holt first saw a Linkellar.
Rayma-k-Tel was with him at the time, a hard hatchet-faced woman who’d come out of Vess; they were drinking in an enclave bar just off the spacefield. The place had good manrealm liquor, and he and Ram swilled it down together from seats by a window of stained yellow glass. Cain was three weeks dead. When Holt saw the Linkellar shuffling past the window, its bulging eyes a-wobble, he tugged at Ram’s arm and turned her around and said, “Look. A new one. You know the race?”
Rayma shrugged loose her arm and shook her head. “No,” she said, irritated. She was a raging xenophobe, which is the other thing that growing up on Vess will do to you. “Probably from further in somewhere. Don’t even try to keep them straight, Mikey. There’s a million different kinds, specially this far in. Damn Damos’ll trade with any thing.”
Holt had looked again, still curious, but the heavy being with the loose green skin was out of sight. Briefly he thought of Cain, and something like a thrill went through him. The old man had shipped for more than two hundred years, he thought, and yet he’d probably never seen an alien of the race they’d just seen. He said something to that effect to Rayma-k-Tel.
She was most unimpressed. “So what?” she said. “So we’ve never seen the Fringe or a Hrangan, though I’d be damned to know why we’d want to.” She smiled thinly at her own wit. “Aliens are like jellybeans, Mikey. They come in a lot of different colors, but inside they’re just about the same.
“So don’t turn yourself into a collector like old narKarmian. Where did it ever get him, after all? He moved around a lot on a bunch of third-rate ships, but he never saw the Far Arm and he never saw the core, and nobody ever will. He didn’t get too rich, neither. Just relax and make a living.”
Holt had hardly been listening. He put down his drink and lightly touched the cool glass of the window with his fingertips.
That night, after Rayma had returned to their ship, Holt left the offworld enclave and wandered out into the Damoosh home-places. He paid half-a-run’s salary to be led to the underground chamber where the world’s wisdompool lay: a vast computer of living light linked to the dead brains of telepathic Damoosh elders (or at least that was how the guide explained it to Holt).
The chamber was a bowl of green fog stirring with little waves and swells. Within its depths, curtains of colored light rippled and faded and were gone. Holt stood on the upper lip looking down and asked his questions, and the answers came back in an echoing whisper as of many tiny voices speaking together. First he described the being he’d seen that afternoon and asked what it had been, and it was then he heard the word Linkellar.
“Where do they come from?” Holt asked.
“Six years from the manrealm by the drive you use,” the whispers told him while the green fog moved. “Toward the core but not straight in. Do you want coordinates?”
“No. Why don’t we see them more often?”
“They are far away, too far perhaps,” the answer came. “The whole width of the Damoosh suns is between the manrealm and the Twelve Worlds of the Linkellar, and so too the colonies of the Nor T’alush and a hundred worlds that have not found stardrives. The Linkellars trade with the Damoosh, but they seldom come to this place, which is closer to you than to them.”
“Yes,” said Holt. A chill went through him, as if a cold wind blew across the cavern and the flickering sea of fog. “I have heard of the Nor T’alush, but not of the Linkellars. What else is there? Further in?”
“There are many directions,” the fog whispered. Colors undulated deep below. “We know the dead worlds of the vanished race the Nor T’alush call the First Ones, though they were not truly the first, and we know the Reaches of the Kresh, and the lost colony of the gethsoids of Aath who sailed from far within the manrealm before it was the manrealm.”
“What’s beyond them?”
�
�The Kresh tell of a world called Cedris, and of a great sphere of suns larger than the manrealm and the Damoosh suns and the old Hrangan Empire all together. The stars within are the ullish stars.”
“Yes,” Holt said. There was a tremor in his voice. “And beyond that? Around it? Further in?”
A fire burned within the far depths of the fog; the green mists glowed with a smoldering reddish light. “The Damoosh do not know. Who sails so far, so long? There are only tales. Shall we tell you of the Very Old Ones? Of the Bright Gods, or the shipless sailors? Shall we sing the old song of the race without a world? Ghost ships have been sighted further in, things that move faster than a man-ship or a Damoosh in drive, and they destroy where they will, yet sometimes they are not there at all. Who can say what they are, who they are, where they are, if they are? We have names, names, stories, we can give you names and stories. But the facts are dim. We hear of a world named Huul the Golden that trades with the lost gethsoids who trade with the Kresh who trade with the Nor T’alush who trade with us, but no Damoosh ship has ever sailed to Huul the Golden and we cannot say much of it or even where it is. We hear of the veiled men of a world unnamed, who puff themselves up and float around and around in their atmosphere, but that may be only a legend, and we cannot even say whose legend. We hear of a race that lives in deep space, who talk to a race called the Dan’lai, who trade with the ullish stars, who trade with Cedris, and so the string runs back to us. But we Damoosh on this world so near the manrealm have never seen a Cedran, so how can we trust the string?” There was a sound like muttering; below his feet, the fog churned, and something that smelled like incense rose to touch Holt’s nostrils.
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