Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  The hard bright path wavered in front of her. Megan halted, blinking at nonexistent tears. Her eyes were dry but her vision oddly blurring. She swayed dizzily, convinced she was about to faint. When she did not, and the light continued to fluctuate, she peered out from under her hat brim, then cautiously up at the sky.

  She watched open-mouthed as long as her eyes could bear the dancing glare, then hurried on through the heat to tell Weng.

  Crossing the deserted clearing, she heard strange sounds echoing through the cylinder. In the deep cool of the inside, she found Weng in a folding recliner, her feet up, her head thrown back in an uncharacteristic position of repose. The sounds reverberated from the computer terminal, and though Megan had never heard Weng’s music before, she knew instinctively that this was it.

  Her immediate impression was of the monumental scale of the composer’s intentions. CRI’s tiny speaker could not possibly be doing justice to either tone or volume. She did not disturb Weng with news of the rippling sky, but sat down to cool off and to listen, wondering if coming into the middle of the composition would inhibit her understanding of it.

  At first, she heard only confusion, vast randomness, long squeaks chittering against sharp burps of percussion, loosely bound by an underscoring hum.

  But as she relaxed into concentration, vague patterns of rhythm suggested themselves. Hints of melody sparkled in bell-pure sequences like wind-driven rain on the surface of a lake. The rhythm strummed deeply. There was a bass drone almost below the range of hearing that pulled her into the spaces between the notes, as if time slowed and left her suspended, her breath imprisoned within her ribs, awaiting the next stroke of sound to release it. And the space that she lingered in was infinite, black, utterly still. Megan closed her eyes, thrilled and impressed.

  Huge! Like being sucked into a void. This is spacer music, all right.

  But there was something edgy as well. Something that disallowed true relaxation. Something stubborn, striving, contentious in the unrelenting percussion and the relationship of melodic themes.

  How unlike Weng, Megan thought, and then, upon reconsideration, but perhaps not. You don’t win a command and keep it without being competitive. She reminded herself that competition can be variously expressed, as well as repressed. Into impulses such as using Game Theory as a basis for musical composition.

  Considering this, her perception of the tonal and rhythmic patterning shifted. She heard the music as a concrete expression of a mathematical abstraction, a bridge between two realms. She sensed the pure logic of numbers as it both constrained and freed the music, forming it to suit a human ear, yet setting it beyond emotion of any sort.

  Beyond intention?

  Strains as distinct and compelling as overhead whispers emerged out of the randomness, in many possible voices that she resolved at last into two. Not melodies, she decided, not even themes. Two sensibilities, rather, chasing each other through the fluid medium of surrounding sound, lunging, shoving, twining around one another like fish fighting in deep water.

  Megan assumed the vibrato rumbling that shook her chair to be part of the composition. She recognized the push and pull of the Game, not just Weng’s theoretical one, but the mythic one as well. It occurred to her that if she listened long enough, the music would reveal the rules to her.

  But Weng started up from her near-trance in the recliner and slapped the switch to cut off the audio.

  The rumbling continued, not loud but disturbingly deep, as if the very earth was groaning in pain. Megan swung her feet to the floor and felt the vibrations translate upward to her knees.

  “Earthquake?”

  “Mr. Clausen did not expect noticeable seismic activity in this old a planet.” Weng’s hands wobbled in tandem with the arms of her chair. The tremor crested in a broken growl like the clatter of falling rocks, then tapered off and died into silence.

  Weng touched the keypad, reactivated the speaker. “CRI?”

  “I am reading some sort of local disturbance, Commander, rather close to the surface. I am checking further.”

  Megan went to the cylinder mouth. A few distant dark forms had appeared on the cliff. She could see arms raised in the direction of the plain.

  “I’m going out to take a look.”

  From the highest point of the clearing, the full expanse of plain was visible over the crumbled stalks. Megan gaped at what she saw.

  A vast ragged hole had swallowed several tens of acres of burned fields and the uncultivated land beyond. A haze of dust drifted lazily away from the crater, captured by the slow dance of rising heat.

  “Sinkhole,” said Weng beside her. “The aquifers are drying out underneath the plain.”

  “You mean, it just collapsed?”

  Weng nodded. “The water left a vacuum to be filled.”

  “My god, Weng, that could happen under the Lander!” As Megan stared at the hole, a protruding chunk of dry earth gave way and crumbled into the abyss. She had a sudden image of the planet devouring itself in a mad heat of rage. “Maybe your abort idea isn’t so ridiculous after all.”

  The exhilaration of departure and the chase was fading behind a haze of exhaustion and noise and the constant vibrations of the straining engines. Stavros routed the cycling broadcast of Weng’s compositions into the copilot’s comset, then shut out all external considerations and lay back to listen, praying secretly for a revelation.

  Susannah sat at the controls, her lower lip sucked in, her eyes flitting nervously between the instrument read-outs and the terrain ahead. Liphar curled at Stavros’ feet, crammed into the narrow space between the seat and the exposed ribbing of the hull. Danforth slept on the floor behind, his big body too long for the bench. Ghirra claimed the bench, stretched out on his back but wide awake, watching Susannah’s hand on the stick. Aguidran paced in the rear of the hold.

  The third and final range of the Grigar was still a distant crenelation at the end of a blasted moonscape of desert, dunes rolling into wind-scoured hardpan dotted with spherical boulders. Stavros was glad for the easy flying over the endless sand. It allowed Danforth a much-needed rest, and himself a quiet time to pursue concentration, a state that was increasingly elusive as his goal, the source of his compulsion and terror, drew nearer.

  The music, if it could be called such, also frightened him. It expressed his dying slide into the Void far better than he could have in words.

  So close, as if she’d been right there with me!

  He wondered if Weng had made a Connection similar to his but was unaware of it. Should she be here in my place?

  But Kav Daven had not chosen Weng. Did the old man choose wrong?

  The guar-fire was a growing agony in his palms, the symbol of his Connection but a further barrier to his concentration. It heightened his awareness of other distractions, the relentless rush of the fans, or the wind sighing along the force shield, or the constant questioning eyes of his companions, waiting for him to say, do or be something decisive.

  His body sang with energy, but he knew it was not his own. He felt it as a surge from outside. It forced passage through him as if he were plugged in, light searing through an optical filament but delivering no message, only raw nerve endings, overfired synapses, pain.

  Stavros sank into the music for escape, and idly tried to match the pulsing of the sky to the snarling rhythm of the bass drone. The sky had discovered color, a subtle range of glowing pinks and blues and lavender, pale electric hues. In the music, there was no color, only the darkness of the Void. Stavros remembered that all too well. The darkness flowed into him with the music and fanned the fire in his palms into a hungry blaze. Yet there was comfort in the familiarity. He gave in to the push and pull of the rhythm, let himself drift in the music as he had in the dark river of his dying.

  A touch on his knee pulled him back. Susannah, glancing away from the instruments and the speeding vista of sand dunes, frowning with concern, pointing emphatically at her ear. He became aware of the tinny
voice nagging at his own, repeating his name. The guar-fire eased as he shook off the music’s spell.

  “Yes, CRI?” he mumbled, trying to sound alert.

  “Dr. James refused to wake Dr. Danforth,” the computer began in peevish apology.

  “By Dr. Danforth’s request, and mine. What’ve you got?”

  “Nothing to cause interest normally, but under the circumstances…”

  Stavros had never known CRI to pause with such human hesitation in the middle of a thought. “Yes?”

  “A slight correlation, Mr. Ibiá. Or rather a brief moment of complete correlation.”

  “Spill it, CRI. What are you talking about?”

  “The Commander’s music. And the patterns of atmospheric energy flux. A moment ago, their separate graphs matched completely, a very complicated rhythm, for exactly forty-one seconds.”

  “What happened?”

  “Based on current data, I cannot offer an explanation…”

  “I mean, when did it cut off? This correlation.”

  “Just now, as you answered my call.”

  Stavros squeezed his eyes shut against the chill rush of vertigo.

  Raellil.

  Apprentice… messenger… the message was inside him, like the music.

  Was the music, this time?

  A strand of wire. More like a circuit.

  He thought he understood suddenly and what he understood renewed his terror.

  She’ll burn me to a goddamn crisp.

  “Thank you, CRI,” he managed. “Let me know if it happens again.”

  But it would not happen again, not until he let it. He understood that as well, and wondered where he would find the courage.

  He had seen himself thus far as the chosen victim of forces visiting from without. Not as a collaborator, whose willingness was essential to the connection.

  But I WAS willing, from the very beginning. Willing to give over his self for the sake of understanding, willing to adopt a Sawl mindset to better his translations, willing to surrender to Kav Daven’s call to mysticism.

  That’s it. That’s what he saw in me. Willingness. Not some special strength or power. Stavros waited for disappointment but found relief and excitement instead. The explanation was so simple, it had to be right.

  But surely there were Sawls who were equally willing, willing enough to carry the guar uncomplaining in their hands. Mine was a Willingness, then, to do something else. What?

  He pictured the old man lost in the spiraling fury of his dance. He tore off the comset and struggled up, stiff and aching, fired by sudden need. Brusquely, he shook Liphar awake.

  The young Sawl crawled blinking from his burrow beside the hull and stood shifting his weight and swinging his arms in response to this unexplained burst of energy. Stavros woke Ghirra, and astonished and delighted him by drawing him into the copilot’s chair and placing the comwire in his ear with a quick explanation of its use. Then he wrapped his good arm around Liphar’s back and urged him toward the rear of the hold. Aguidran paced irritably away, back to the front and her brother’s company. Stavros settled cross-legged on the grated floor, a crate hard against his back. With a certain unconscious formality, he motioned Liphar to sit opposite him.

  “Lifa, you said you could teach me about being a priest.”

  Liphar did not respond with the same bravado that had inspired his bid to win a seat on the Sled. His fingers twined nervously.

  “There are a few things I need to know right now,” said Stavros.

  Liphar waited solemnly, very much the willing but unsure apprentice.

  “What is it like when you contemplate the Flame?”

  The apprentice smiled with relief, expecting a sterner interrogation. “This is a joining, Ibi. Very peace, and dark, like in water.”

  Stavros wet his lips, gone instantly dry. “Like swimming, in a river?”

  Liphar’s nod accepted an imperfect but viable description.

  “Do you hear anything?”

  Liphar hunched his shoulders, conspiratorial. “You see, Ibi? You know this already.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “I listen this singing of the world and the Sisters.”

  Stavros shut his eyes, opened them. “Lifa, what did Kav Daven really mean when he told me to dance?”

  Liphar’s thin lips twitched into a doubting grin, It occurred to Stavros that the young man preferred to think he was joking.

  “I mean, how does a priest learn to dance? Who teaches this? Who taught you the dances to celebrate the Planting, or the Birth dances?”

  “I learn this in the guild.”

  “From your journeymen? From the master priests?”

  “Anyone teach this, Ibi.” Liphar’s grin wavered.

  “Anyone? Can you teach me?”

  The young Sawl looked mildly shocked. “Ibi, this dances is not same dances.” He frowned as if scolding Stavros for playing lightly with a serious matter. “I teach to you about the signs and the First Books, yes. I teach about all the chant and the story. But my dances is not to you.”

  Stavros felt twisted about a circular reasoning. “But he never… Kav Daven died before he could teach me his,” He pressed his fist against his teeth. Lured me to his purpose and deserted me…

  “Why didn’t he choose an apprentice earlier, Lifa?”

  The priest-to-be spread his hands as if it were obvious. “He find no one to know the dances.”

  “To know? No one who knew the dances?”

  Liphar nodded, “He does not teach this dances, Ibi.” He gestured from the pit of his stomach. “This is here, like the child inside, in you he calls ‘raellil’.” His expression mixed admiration with compassion for those whose gifts rule them instead of the other way around, “You know this, Ibi,” he chided with a self-reassuring smile. “If you not know this, Kav Daven no say, this is my raellil.”

  “Lifa, if I know it, I don’t know I know it.”

  Liphar offered in return the unflinching gaze of the faithful.

  Stavros backed his spine against the crate, The lashing cords nudged the tender skin below his shoulder blade, pushed at the pad of bandages higher up, He was abruptly tired of mystery. Like wandering lost in a jungle, he might eventually get where he was going, but the many false starts and wrong turns were frustratingly inefficient. Unlike Clausen. Clausen was so sure of where he was going and what to do when he got there, he wasn’t even in much of a hurry.

  Willingness alone was not enough, Willingness to wander in the jungle did not tell you the right path to take.

  Willingness, in this case, to wander in the Void.

  The vibrations of the Sled sang through his palms, flattened against the plastic floor grate. Stavros reconsidered that place he called the Void: the dark windswept plane that the Sisters’ consciousnesses inhabited. Though he must sink deep within himself to enter it, it existed elsewhere, outside, he was sure. Not some trance state, not some waking dream.

  What then? Where? Do the priests go there when they meditate?

  The old priest’s dying order confounded him. Stavros pictured himself as a locked door. The Kav had carried the key in his withered brown hands, The Kav had opened him at will and, dying, had taken the key with him.

  It’s give up or find a new key.

  Having processed his confusion as rationally as he could, Stavros allowed himself to contemplate the surprise of Weng’s music.

  Shall a Terran music lead my Sawlish dance?

  He jumped up, startling Liphar out of a heat-doze, He paced forward, edged past Aguidran who watched her brother with disapproval as he tried to involve CRI in conversation over the shining strand of comwire. Ghirra was hunched in concentration.

  Stavros crouched between the two forward seats, His stomach knotted in anticipation, fear of what he was about to attempt. He weighed the wisdom of waking Danforth to tell him about the correlation of weather and music, but the slack exhaustion in the planetologist’s sleeping face deterred him. Instea
d, he leaned over to brush a quick kiss across Susannah’s cheek. The soft warmth of her skin reassured him. She smiled but did not look away from the windscreen.

  Stavros touched Ghirra’s shoulder, requesting the comset. Ghirra removed it regretfully and handed it over, vacating the chair.

  Stavros slipped into the seat and hooked the wire around his jaw, trying not to feel imprisoned by it. “CRI, patch me through to Weng.”

  “The Commander is currently in her sleep period, Mr. Ibiá.”

  “No matter, you tell me: what’s her most recent composition? Can you play it for me?”

  CRI paused like a secretary over an open file drawer. “There are a number of unfinished works in storage, some studies, many notes.”

  “Her newest completed work.”

  “That would be the piece she finished last month during the flood, while I was out of contact. Her Dies Irae.”

  “Her what?”

  “The title of the piece is Dies Irae. Archaic perhaps, but thematically appropriate under the circumstances, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Something in the computer’s tone rang harshly familiar. “Is that what Emil said about it?”

  “Yes,” CRI admitted. “How did you know?”

  “Never mind. Play it for me. And send it out simultaneously, direct beam to Nolagri.”

  “Ready, Mr. Ibiá.”

  The violence of it astonished him, laid him flat against the back of his seat as if it were physical, like a blow to the jaw, like a cathedral door thrown open on an explosion of wind and rain. The sound hissed and spat at him, music only by the broadest definition, but vast enough in scale to encompass the chaos of galaxies. It yowled like a blizzard gale, raked his brain and eardrums with razored claws. Stavros recoiled, foreseeing its dangers, and circled around it, listening from a mental distance in a last gesture of self-preservation.

  “Lifa!” Instinct prompted the call.

  Liphar wriggled in next to him, reclaiming the narrow slot between seat and hull. The young Sawl pressed against his side without need of explanation and laid a hand across his wrist where it rested limp along his thigh.

  The knot of fear in Stavros’ stomach dropped like a stone into the well of his spine as an image of Kav Daven flashed to mind, the old man sitting so still among the leaping flames of the StoryHall, the tawny girl’s hand resting on his knee, so lightly, so like the feather touch of Liphar’s fingers on his wrist.