“I will, when your team is ready to cope,” Valen replied coldly. “Congratulations, Milady Windholm. I didn’t expect my little puzzle would be solved this fast. Maybe I should arrange another practice session. Though it won’t be as informative when you’ve been forewarned, will it?”
“You swinesucker,” Esker said. “You smug, white-bellied [94] snotfink. If you think you and your lizard bedmate are fit to command men—”
“Enough. Silence, or I’ll order up the robots and put you in confinement. Go back to your duties.”
Her exultation had vanished from Lissa. It was as if the frozen darkness outboard reached in to touch her. “Captain,” she said, “you and I had better hold a conference.”
He hesitated. “Immediately,” she said.
The response came flat. “Very well. The ship has things under control.” Aside from the people, she thought.
She turned the intercom off. “That’s right, milady,” Esker snarled. “Give him his bucketful right back in his mouth. You’ve got the rank to do it.”
“Have a care,” she said into the smoldering eyes. “Without discipline, we’re done for.”
Striding the corridors, she worked off some tension and arranged some words. At the back of awareness, she was glad of the acceleration. Weightlessness made faces go puffy and unattractive.
XVI
GIVEN Dagmar’s omnipresence, the captain need seldom occupy his own viewglobe. Lissa found him in his cabin. The ship must have announced her arrival to him, for the door retracted as she approached it and stood waiting. “Come in, please,” he invited. She heard the tension in his voice, saw it in visage and stance.
Orichalc uncurled on the deck. “Best I betake myself elsewhere,” he said.
“No, I want to speak with you too,” Lissa answered.
The head shook, solemnly imitating a human negation. “Not at present, honored one. Later, if you still wish. I shall be in my quarters.” Holding the trans in delicate hands, the long body slipped past her. The door closed behind it.
Lissa stared after. “Why?” she asked. “If he meets Esker along the way, there’ll likely be an unpleasant scene.”
“Susaians read emotions,” Valen reminded her. “Orichalc must deem we’ll do better alone.” His tone sharpened. “As for Esker, I’m bloody sick of his insolence. Maybe you can warn him. If he pushes me further, I just might give him twenty-four hours of sensory deprivation, and hope to teach him some manners.”
Yes, she thought, his type is bound to grate on yours. I should have foreseen. Well, it’s up to me to set matters right—or, at any rate, make them endurable.
Returning to him, her glance traversed the cabin. It was larger than the sleeping cubicles, but mainly because it contained a desk, a four-screen terminal with associated keyboards, and access to a tiny bathroom. Otherwise it was monkishly austere, the bunk [96] made up drumhead tight. His garb was a plain white coverall and slipshoes.
“Be seated, milady.” He gestured at the single chair. When she took it, he half settled on the desk. His smile was forced. “Seated because I suppose we’d better allow our groundlubbers another thirty minutes or so of weight to get their stuff properly stowed.”
Nor did she sit at ease. She compelled herself to meet his gaze and say, “I know Esker can be difficult, but he is able. On balance, I judged him the best person readily available for his tasks. I did not anticipate—Valen, I must insist you show the understanding, the, the kind of leadership I thought you would.”
His reply was low, almost subdued, but stubborn. “What have I done wrong?”
“This trick you played on us, with Orichalc’s connivance. I mean to reprimand him as well. Frankly, I feel insulted. But it’s the scientists whom you’ve wronged most.”
“Milady, did you really think we’d be wise to plunge straight to an unknown destination without a single trial run? Now it’s proven that we need a training period, if not a complete shakedown cruise.”
“You know perfectly well, doctrine is that the moment we spot something we’re not sure we can handle, we hyperjump away.”
“We may not be able to, on half a second’s notice.”
“Yes, and strolling through Riverside Park at home, we may be struck by lightning. One can’t provide against every conceivable contingency, not even by huddling forever in a hole.” Lissa drew breath. “This is getting beside the point.” It is getting closer to the basic truth that I want. “We will have no more such incidents. Is that clear?”
Valen frowned. “Milady, I am the captain. My duty is to follow my best judgment.”
Davy might have uttered those words, with the same gravity. Yes, and as Valen did, he looked much like the Head. For an [97] instant, Lissa’s eyes stung, her heart stumbled. She pulled herself straight and replied, recognizing that she spoke too loud and fast, “You’re in command of the spacecraft while she’s under way. She and her robots obey you. The rest of us must not obstruct, nor refuse a legitimate order. However, it is the House of Windholm that sponsors this expedition and its policies that you are to execute. I speak for it. I have authority to direct us to any lawful destination, including directly back home; and upon our return, you are answerable to the House for all actions.”
He folded his arms and leaned back a little. “Let’s not fight,” he said quietly. “Just what is your complaint?”
“I told you. Your distrust of us is bad enough. Don’t you know how important morale is, élan, on every exploratory mission? The way you showed your attitude was downright humiliating. I can swallow it for the sake of peace; but then, it didn’t touch me in my honor. Esker is a proud man. He has a right to be infuriated.”
“Proud? ‘Overbearing’ would be a better word; and he doesn’t have the genuine worth that might excuse it. He’s too small, in psyche still more than body. He can’t stand having his superiority called into question. Most of his tantrum was because you, the amateur, reached the truth before he did.”
You see cruelly well, Lissa thought, but your vision is narrow. “You don’t understand. And you’ve got to. Esker’s had to fight for everything, all his life. His parents weren’t only poor, they were lowly, despised—patronless. As a boy he needed unlimited brashness, first to keep hope alive, then to bring himself to the attention of those high and mightinesses who could help him. In spite of his adoption, his scholarships, his accomplishments, he continued suffering scorn and discrimination. Professionally, too, he was always thwarted. He was born too late to become the great scientist he could have been, centuries ago. Unless this voyage of ours— That’s a reason I picked him, Gerward. Don’t ruin his dream!”
“Must everybody indulge him forever?” Valen retorted. “Is he [98] the single being alive that’s had troubles and frustrations? A real man puts such things behind him, acknowledges his mistakes, and goes on.”
“Like you?” escaped from her.
“What do you mean?” he cried.
He jerked to his feet and swayed above her. She must needs rise too. He had gone appallingly white. “D-don’t be so self-righteous,” she stammered. “You’ve made y-your mistakes. Everybody has.”
“Mine?” It sounded as if he were being garrotted.
I’ve got to retrieve this, oh, God, I didn’t realize how woundable he still is. “Your, well, your record shows you gave up an excellent position once. You must have ... had reasons.”
His head sank. He turned from her. A hand dropped to the desktop and lay helpless. “You know them, then.” The words fell empty.
I could bite out my tongue, she thought. Or should I? May it not be better to bring this forth, between the two of us, and I try to gauge how trustworthy he is? If I can. If I can. Dad, be with me, lend me your wisdom and strength.
“About Naia, yes,” she said.
He stared at whatever rose before him. “And still you kept me on?”
“We didn’t find out till almost departure time, and Orichalc thinks the hour is late for us. Which is
one reason this ... delay ... upset me. But I, I was willing to have you anyway, Gerward. We’d gotten to know each other, at least a little. I’d like to hear your side of the story.”
“Nobody else ever did ... Ha-a-ah!” he cawed. “Now I’m sounding like Esker. Self-pity. No. There was no excuse. I ran away because I was weak. Couldn’t stand it. How many might I have saved?”
She reached toward his back, but withdrew. “It was terrible, I’m sure.”
“Blackened land, ash blowing on acid winds. Craters, trees [99] strewn around them like jackstraws, kilometer after kilometer after kilometer, snags of wall above toppled ruins, a burnt-out city. The dead in their thousands—millions, we knew—animal, human, sprawled bloated and stinking till they fell apart and the bones grinned through—” Valen checked the shrillness that had arisen in his voice. After a moment, he went on in a monotone: “But it was good when we helped survivors. Planetside vehicles, ground and air, located them and brought them to the spacecraft. Many were ragged, filthy, starved, sick, but they would live. I lifted my share of them to the moon, and came back for more.”
He stopped. When the silence had lasted too long for her, she touched the hand that dangled at his side and whispered, “What happened then?”
He turned around. She looked upon despair. “The next lot of stones arrived,” he said harshly. “They were strung out along the whole orbit, of course, so that the night sky was always full of shooting stars, except where dust or storms hid them. We’d get a major strike somewhere almost daily. But the bulk of them stayed clustered together. When that returned, the real barrage began again.
“The orbit was perturbed and the planet rotated, so new areas were hit worst at every such time. Now Ranz’s turn came, a big, beautiful, heavily populated island off in an ocean that from above looked like blued silver. I was ordered to a certain town, unharmed as yet. Night had fallen when I landed. Another ship was already there. An awkward, crewed hulk, she was. But much bigger than mine, with a belly that could take a hundred. They were streaming out toward her. It was chaos. Not quite a mob scene, everybody seemed brave, struggled to maintain order, but nevertheless the mass swirled and eddied, yelled and moaned, mothers tried to pass small children along over the heads of people in front—the rescue operation always was badly confused, you see. There had been so little warning, and then volunteer vessels like mine kept appearing unannounced—do you see? Nobody here had heard I was coming. At least, nobody appeared to know. I [100] wondered if anyone had even seen me land; it was some distance off, naturally. I debarked, hoping I could do something toward straightening matters out. I was shaken and sickened by what I’d seen earlier, but I did debark. I shouted and waved. ‘Over here! This way!’ ”
He fought for air. She could not but take both his hands in hers and ask, “What then? What was it like?”
“Like the, the end of the world, the wreck of the gods, in, in some ancient myth,” he groaned. “I was in a brushy meadow, near a road, several kilometers from the town. Its roofs, spires, domes stood black against the sky. The sky was afire, you see. Flames streaked over it, out of the west, from horizon to horizon. Hundreds of flames—the great fireballs, blue-white, tailing off in red and yellow, that left me half blinded, till I didn’t know what was after-image and what was rock booming in at kilometers per second—and the little devils, countless, zip-zip-zip, wicked for an instant across the dark, gone, but more were there at once, more and more. Only the night wasn’t really dark. Not with all those thunderbolts splitting and shaking it, and a forest burning to the south, and— They roared, screamed, whistled. When a big one struck somewhere, I’d see a flash over the horizon. A second or two later the ground shivered under my feet, up through my bones and teeth; and then the airborne noise reached me, sometimes like a cannon, sometimes like an avalanche that went on and on, below that uproar overhead. The air reeked of smoke and lightning. And I knew I was defenseless. If anything hit anywhere near, by the sheerest blind chance, that ended my universe.”
His hands were cold between her fingers. “You could face that,” she foreknew.
“Yes.” The tears broke forth. “Barely.”
“But what happened next?”
“I—I—” He wrenched free of her. “No.”
“Tell me.”
He slumped onto the chair, covered his eyes, and shuddered.
“I hurried toward the crowd,” she made out. “I waved and [101] shouted. Several on the fringes, they saw, they moved my way. A girl ran ahead of them. She was maybe six or seven years old, light on her feet. I’ve wondered why she went alone. Got separated from her family in the scramble? There I was, as terrified as her, but she didn’t know that. I was a man, holding out my arms to her under that horrible sky, and at my back the ship that was life. She held a kitten to her breast—”
He wept, long, racking gulps and rattles, into his hands. “The strike— The town went up, a crash that deafened and staggered me, a blaze that rose and lost itself in a black tree of smoke and dust—fragments—they tore through the crowd like sleet. Those people that were making for me, they, they became ... rags flung right and left. The little girl rolled over. She flopped into a bush. It caught fire. I ran to her and stamped out the flames. It’d been such a pretty dress. Her hair—‘Please, oh please!’ I think she screamed. The chunk had ripped through her. Guts slurped out. Her kitten was burned too. I put my heel down on its skull. It crunched. That was all I could do for her. Wasn’t it? By then she was dead. A bolide trundled and rumbled overhead. Its light brought her face out of the shadows, in fits and starts, fallen jaw and staring eyes. She looked very like my daughter the same age, my daughter who’d died the year before.
“I don’t remember much else, till I was back in space, outbound.”
Valen raised his head, pawed at the tears, caught a breath, and said, saw-edged, “No excuses. I never made any. I had that much self-respect left me.”
We are none of us infinitely strong, Davy Windholm had told his own daughter. Always the universe can break us. If we go on afterward, scars and all, it’s because luck made us brave. She knelt to enfold the man who had opened himself to her.
XVII
THE ship sprang to a known part of space. There she coasted while Noel, Elif, and Tessa practiced in free fall. Violet and rose, a nebula phosphoresced across a fourth of heaven. Through its laciness gleamed fierce points of light, new-born giant suns, and the coals that were stars still forming. Oh, no lack of wonders whereon to sharpen skills!
Given intelligence and healthy reflexes, most people soon learned how to handle their weightless bodies. Precision work was the hard thing to master. It began with always, automatically, making sure that objects would stay where you left them. Over and over and over, Lissa put her pupils through the drill, explained, chided, encouraged, demonstrated, guided. Then followed assignments in partnership with the three robots. Who knew but that the multiple manipulators and ship-linked but individual intelligences of Uno, Dos, and Tres would be needed?
“Time for lunch,” she said wearily. “Meet again in half an hour. You’re doing quite well. In fact, you no longer require me to hector you.”
“Why, Sergeant Major, you sound downright human,” Elif japed.
Lissa laughed. “I have reason. I won’t be here, next session. Seriously, I am pleased. Keep on as hard as you have been, get your efforts a little better coordinated, and we’ll be in shape to fight mad tax collectors.”
Their friendship felt like a warmth at her back as she left. Yes, she had driven them hard, but they realized why. House Windholm’s clients knew that it traditionally expected more of its patrons than it did of them.
[103] The whole cosmos was warm and bright. Flying down the corridors, Lissa whistled that bawdy old ballad “Two Lovers in Two Spacesuits.”
She assumed Esker would be at a rec screen, whether to play three-dimensional go against the ship or watch one of the loud, flashy musical shows he’d put in the library da
tabase. He wasn’t, though. She inquired, “He is in the electronics shop,” Dagmar told her.
“What’s he want there?” Lissa wondered aloud.
Hitherto, she wouldn’t have gotten a reply. The ship’s capabilities weren’t for crewfolk to spy on each other. Valen had lately directed that she have the same full access as himself. It was just a gesture, impulsive, scarcely significant, but endearing. She’d forgotten, and felt surprise at first when Dagmar said, “He appears to be writing a program. I cannot tell for certain, because he is using a personal computer he brought along, unconnected to my systems, and his body blocks the keyboard and display from my sensors. Do you wish a visual?”
“No, no. I only have to talk with him. I’ll go in person.” Lissa set off.
Already competent in zero gravity, he hunched at the middle of the compartment, legs wrapped around a stanchion, machine geckofooted to his lap. It was a mini, useful enough when something more powerful wasn’t available. He started when she entered and slammed the cover shut. She smiled. “Hullo,” she greeted. “What are you up to?”
He swallowed. “An, uh, experimental procedure. I don’t want to show it to anybody till it’s finished.”
“Why not use Dagmar’s systems? You’d finish in a tenth the time, not counting blind alleys that that gimcrack may let you wander into.”
He flushed, then paled. How haggard he had grown, these past several watches. And solitary, silent. She almost missed his waspishness. “I don’t choose to! When my program’s ready, when I’m satisfied, I’ll put it in the network.”
[104] And if it’s a failure, there’ll be no record of it. Nobody will ever know, not even the ship. You poor, forlorn devil.
Best avoid the subject. “As you like. I’m afraid you’ll have to set it aside and rejoin your team, at 1230 hours.”
He glared. “Why?”
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